A History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery 9781407307848, 9781407337791

Table of contents :
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter I: From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century
Chapter II: The second half of the 18th century, The Golden Age of Hamilton, d’Hancarville, Winckelmann, and Wedgwood; Collecting, Publishing, and the Reception of Red-Figure Vases in Art and Design
Chapter III: The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s
Chapter IV: The 1870s until the 1900s
Chapter V: The 20th Century
Chapter VI: Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Bibliography

Citation preview

BAR S2226 2011 HIGGINSON A HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF SOUTH ITALIAN BLACK- AND RED-FIGURE POTTERY

B A R

A History of the Study of South Italian Blackand Red-Figure Pottery Ronald Higginson

BAR International Series 2226 2011

A History of the Study of South Italian Blackand Red-Figure Pottery Ronald Higginson

BAR International Series 2226 2011

Published in 2016 by BAR Publishing, Oxford BAR International Series 2226 A History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery © R Higginson and the Publisher 2011 The author's moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 9781407307848 paperback ISBN 9781407337791 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407307848 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library BAR Publishing is the trading name of British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd. British Archaeological Reports was first incorporated in 1974 to publish the BAR Series, International and British. In 1992 Hadrian Books Ltd became part of the BAR group. This volume was originally published by Archaeopress in conjunction with British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd / Hadrian Books Ltd, the Series principal publisher, in 2011. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2016.

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Acknowledgements I am indebted to the following for much help in bringing this work to fruition: Karim Arafat, Rosemary Barrow, Cathy Morgan, Geoffrey Waywell, Carlotta Dionisotti, Alicia Totolos, Brian Shefton, Alan Johnston, Thomas Mannack, Norbert Kunisch, Oliver Taplin, Susan Walker, Catherine Edwards, Kate Cooper, Hugh Bowden, Bernard Lowe, David Holohan, Elisa Zen, Joanna Hayman-Bolt, Jamie Hayman-Bolt, Jason McKinstry, Rachel Dowling, Tim Bartlett, Peter Hall, Mark Hassell, Roberto Rossi, and King’s College London Classics Department. In the writing of this book, Australian academics were very helpful: Ian McPhee, Ted Robinson and Richard Green responded enthusiastically. However, I was unable to contact Trendall’s close collaborator Alexander Cambitoglou, thus leaving a gap in the Trendall section. I did not visit the Trendall Archive at La Trobe as I was reliably informed by McPhee & Robinson that Trendall burnt all his papers, and the archive is a modern database started after his death and named in his honour. American academics were also very responsive, especially Claire Lyons and Ricardo Elia. Correspondence with Alessandra Giovenco at the BSR library revealed extensive papers relating to Trendall’s time there, to which Giovenco kindly gave me access. I was also given help by F. Boitani at the Villa Giulia, and from Stefano de Caro’s office at the Archaeological Museum at Naples. In England I received help from Bernard Nurse and Adrian James at the Society of Antiquaries (who have some of the earliest Gerhard publications), and access and help from Stephen Astley at The Soane Museum, Alexandra Villing and Thorsten Opper at the Greek and Roman Department of the British Museum, and continual help and support from the friendly staff at the Institute of Classical Studies, especially Sue Willetts and Sophia Fisher in finding the whereabouts of scarce and inconsistently abbreviated journals, and help with reading Gothic German. I wrote the early part of this work before Vinnie Nørskov’s Greek Vases in New Contexts was published in 2002, and several items that I had researched and discovered independently had also been researched and published by Nørskov. Finally to my wife Ella for total and unstinting financial and domestic support through the years taken out from work to pursue my studies. To those two or three individuals whose brief response could have been so useful, but chose to ignore short, very polite, enquiries, I quote Doctor Johnson’s letter to Lord Chesterfield: “Seven years, my Lord, have passed since I waited in your outward rooms. The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind, but it has been delayed till I am indifferent.”

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Contents Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................................i List of Illustrations.....................................................................................................................................iii Introduction................................................................................................................................................1 Chapter I From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century....................................................................5 The Mediaeval and Renaissance Rediscovery of Etruscan Tombs and Early Mention of Red-Figure Vases.......................................................................................................10 Etruscheria: The 17th and First Half of the 18th Centuries.............................................................18 Dempster.......................................................................................................................................18 La Chausse....................................................................................................................................18 Montfaucon...................................................................................................................................20 The Academy of Cortona..............................................................................................................20 The Mastrilli Collection.................................................................................................................21 Gori...............................................................................................................................................21 De Caylus......................................................................................................................................23 Piranesi..........................................................................................................................................26 Passeri...........................................................................................................................................27 Chapter II The Second Half of the 18th Century, The Golden Age of Hamilton, d’Hancarville, Winckelmann, and Wedgwood; Collecting, Publishing, and the Reception of RedFigure Vases in Art and Design...............................................................................................................29 Vases Versus Ancient Sculpture and Ancient Literature in the 18th century.................................29 Hamilton.......................................................................................................................................31 Winckelmann................................................................................................................................35 Other British Collections..............................................................................................................38 The Hope Collection.....................................................................................................................39 The Castle Ashby Collection........................................................................................................41 Newtimber Place and Others........................................................................................................41 Soane.............................................................................................................................................52 Disney...........................................................................................................................................43 Wedgwood....................................................................................................................................44 Wedgwood’s Competitors.............................................................................................................46 Saint-Non and Denon....................................................................................................................47 Goethe...........................................................................................................................................48 Böttiger.........................................................................................................................................48 Luigi Lanzi....................................................................................................................................48 The 18th Century............................................................................................................................50 Chapter III The Century of German Vase-Scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s......................................53 Early Discoveries in Greece..........................................................................................................53 Vase and the Creative Imagination...............................................................................................53 Millin 1808...................................................................................................................................54 Millingen.......................................................................................................................................54 Dubois Maisonneuve....................................................................................................................56 Inghirami 1824..............................................................................................................................57 James Christie...............................................................................................................................57 The Shapes of Vases.......................................................................................................................59 The Naming of Vases.....................................................................................................................62 130 Years of the Jatta Family.........................................................................................................64 Gerhard and the Hyperboreans......................................................................................................65 Confusion Caused by the Vulci Finds............................................................................................65 Jahn................................................................................................................................................68

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Chapter IV The 1870s until the 1900s.......................................................................................................................71 The Exploration of Southern Italy.................................................................................................71 Furtwängler....................................................................................................................................72 Patroni............................................................................................................................................74 Macchioro......................................................................................................................................77 Walters............................................................................................................................................77 Hartwig...........................................................................................................................................77 After Furtwängler and Patroni and Pre-Beazley and Trendall: the 1900s......................................78 Ely...................................................................................................................................................78 Horner.............................................................................................................................................78 Watzinger........................................................................................................................................79 Leroux.............................................................................................................................................79 Chapter V The 20th Century......................................................................................................................................81 Beazley............................................................................................................................................81 Buschor...........................................................................................................................................83 Hoppin............................................................................................................................................83 Wuilleumier.....................................................................................................................................84 Tillyard............................................................................................................................................84 Moon...............................................................................................................................................86 Trendall...........................................................................................................................................86 Schneider-Herrmann.......................................................................................................................94 Other scholars in the Past 50 Years.................................................................................................96 ChapterVI Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study .........................................................................................100 Final Agreement on Naming of Regions and Schools ....................................................................100 Coins versus Vase Iconography.......................................................................................................101 Perspective.......................................................................................................................................102 Theatre.............................................................................................................................................104 Looting and Trafficking of Vases.....................................................................................................105 Faking and Detection.......................................................................................................................109 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................122 Abbreviations.............................................................................................................................................115 Bibliography..............................................................................................................................................116

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List of Illustrations Figure 1 Painting of a bell-krater on a wall in the House of the Dioscuri, Pompeii Figure 2a The frieze of the Portland Vase Figure 2b A collage of images from Apulian vases Figure 3 4th century Apulian red-figure relief hydria from Metaponto (BM G.11) Figure 4 Piero della Francesco, fresco of an angel in the church of San Francesco, Arezzo and female heads on Apulian red-figure vases Figure 5 Piero della Francesco, ‘Adam Announcing his Death’ and details from a Campanian bellkrater Figure 6 Carpaccio, ‘The Vision of Saint Augustine’ Figure 7 Carpaccio, ‘The Vision of Saint Augustine’ (Detail) Figure 8 Two 16th century Italian terracotta vases in the red-figure style Figure 9 Two 16th century Maiolica plates in the red-figure style Figure 10 Woodcut dated 1622 depicting the museum of Francesco Calceolari Figure 11 Woodcut dated 1599 depicting the museum of Ferrante Imperato Figure 12 Red-figure vases illustrated by the Academy of Cortona, 1741 Figure 13 de Caylus’ Recueil showing ancient vases drawn in the 18th century style Figure 14 de Caylus’ Recueil showing Phrygian caps on a vase Figure 15 18th century silhouette showing the influence of figured vase-painting Figure 16 James Gillray, ‘From Sir William Hamilton’s Private Collection’ Figure 17 James Gillray, ‘A Cognoscenti contemplating ye Beauties of ye Antique Figure 18a A newly opened tomb near Naples – interior Figure 18b A newly opened Tomb near Naples - exterior Figure 19 Federick Rehberg, ‘Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes’ Figure 20 George Dawe, Mrs. Thomas Hope in a gown inspired by figured vases Figure 21 The Gabinetto Etrusco at the Palace of King Carlo Alberto Figure 22 Wedgwood, black basalt cup and saucer c.1770 copying an owl skyphos Figure 23 Giustiniani Factory, Naples, blue and gold amphora c.1830-40 Figure 24 Dubois Maisonneuve, plate from Introduction a l’Etude des Vases, 1817 Figure 25 James Christie, engraving of plant heads showing the origin of vase shapes Figure 26 Piranesi, juxtaposition of shells and vases, 1769 Figure 27 Type II aryballos in the form of shells, c.500 BC Figure 28 Pottier, comparison of 18th century Japanese painting with Greek vase design

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Introduction

South Italian black- and red-figure vases were the first ancient vases to be rediscovered in any quantity because they were located in the accessible areas within reach of Rome and Naples, and also because they had been interred in chamber tombs, which helped ensure their survival intact. From the first recorded discovery of figured vases in Italy in the Middle Ages, through to the 1800s, the regions of Ottoman Greece were inaccessible. One could say that the very study of Greek vases began with those first found in Southern Italy and Etruria. Scholars were able to handle and argue over these vases for around 350 years before vases started to be uncovered in any quantity in Greece itself, so their study could be seen as the foundation of all Greek vase scholarship.1 Also, through the scenes of everyday life such as domestic and sacred interiors, costume, utensils, sport, death and theatre depicted on them they are one of the best sources of evidence in the quest to understand the ancient Greek world. Despite all of these attributes, in the last two hundred years South Italian vases have been largely neglected and even reviled in favour of their Attic counterparts.2

the Perfect style [Attic red-figure] its chief charm, indicate these vases to belong, if not always to the period of decadence, at least to the verge of it.4 This prejudice against South Italian pottery prevailed into the 20th century, being acknowledged by commentators in terms both apologetic and critical. In 1929, Noël Moon lamented the fate of South Italian vases as ‘works of art wilfully neglected’,5 and in 1960 R.M. Cook was in full agreement with the low opinion of these wares: Since the first big finds of painted Greek pottery were made in Campania and the Basilicata, most of the older museums have a surfeit of the South Italian version of red-figure. Its availability, the many theatrical scenes it exhibits, and perhaps their stronger stomachs made it popular with an earlier generation of scholars. Now it is neglected.6 Cook wrote these lines before Trendall’s LCS appeared in 1967, and Cook did at least add, ‘… except by a few specialists’ in his later editions.7 But this is still a rather exaggerated view, and ‘stronger stomachs’ seems an unnecessarily harsh attack. Nothing so vitriolic seems to have been used regarding any other type of classical artifact. However, it does show the disdain for South Italian vasepainting even on the part of some of those who studied and published it.8 Trendall (who often instilled a sense of fun into his work)9 observed wryly of the academic attitude to South Italian pottery:

South Italian red-figure made up the majority of all the vases that were found during the early period of their rediscovery between the 13th and 18th centuries (although on a small scale before 1700), and provided the impetus for the collection and study of ancient vases and their iconography. But in the second half of the 18th century, with the influence of Winckelmann and interest in the ancient world turning away from Rome and looking to all things Greek, a fashion for the more detailed and finely painted Attic vases was created. This change in taste was largely instigated by the publication of Sir William Hamilton’s second vase collection (1791-95) and Attic vases gradually took the foreground whilst South Italian vases became down-graded and side-lined.

A strong swing of the archaeological pendulum during the thirties, especially in England, in favour of archaic Greek art led not only to the almost complete neglect of Apulian but also to its frequent disparagement by writers on Greek pottery whose general attitude to South Italian vases was rather like Virgil’s advice to Dante in regard to the lost souls outside the gates of Hell ‘non ragionam di lor, mar guarda e passa’.10

Finally, after the huge finds of some of the finest Attic wares yet seen were being made at Vulci from 1828 onwards, the status of South Italian vases was relegated even further. The traveller George Dennis3 (1814-1898), who visited many tomb-sites in Italy including Vulci in the 1840s, compared Italiote vases with Attic examples and concluded:

Towards the end of his career, Trendall returned to this theme:

The general inferiority and carelessness of the design, the flourish and lavishment of decoration – in a word, the absence of that chasteness and purity which gives

  Dennis (1848) 83.   Moon (1929) 30. 6   Cook (1960) 193. 7   Cook (1997) 182. 8  Also, S.I. vases were completely out of fashion in the 1930s, as can be seen from collapsed auction prices. In England an increase in academic interest in Corinthian wares in the 1930s could be due in large part to Payne’s work at the BSA. 9   McPhee (1997) 502, & Totolos, pers. comm. 10  Trendall (1982) 1036. 4 5

  From the 1460s until the first vases found in Greece were published in the 1820s. 2   A real resurgence of interest in S.I. vases has only taken place since Trendall’s LCS of 1967. 3   Not in DNB, for life of Dennis see Rhodes (1973). 1

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery The pottery of the Greek colonists in South Italy has not on the whole had a good press. When it has not been completely brushed aside, it has been called ‘provincial’ or stigmatized as a ‘sorry appendix’ to Attic vase-painting. One should not, however, judge South Italian by the standards of early Attic redfigure – the world of the 4th century BC is far different from that of the early 5th – and, when set beside the contemporary Attic products, South Italian vases can at least hold their own and are certainly more interesting as regards subject matter.11

origins, and vases later found in Greece were claimed to have been stolen from Tuscan estates and planted there.16 Until the late 19th century, Attic, South Italian and Etruscan wares were mostly grouped together for display and study, and South Italian vases were inevitably merged with other wares and general advances were relevant to all vases. It has therefore been necessary to include the main advances in all vase scholarship in this work, and the demarcations have occasionally become unavoidably blurred.17 One of the first things that strikes one when attempting to delve into the published scholarship on antiquities of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is the mass of verbosity, preamble, preterition and prevarication, but the paucity of actual technical content. The objective view of antiquity that started with the Hyperboreans and came to fruition with Furtwängler and Beazley was alien to the subjective minds of 18th century savants and dilettanti. When quoting texts (particularly from the 18th century), I have reproduced all eccentric spelling and punctuation, arbitrary capital letters and italics as they appear in the original texts, in English and other languages.

As regards any written history of the scholarship of figured vases, Herbert Hoffmann referred in his lecture In the Wake of Beazley to ‘the still largely unwritten history of the study of Greek vases,’12 and Cook commented ‘this subject has been neglected. Even the writers of special studies usually do not go far back. The notable exceptions are for Geometric’.13 Hoffmann and Cook are referring to all Greek vases, but the history of how South Italian vases specifically have been studied through the centuries appears to have been hardly touched upon. In contrast, von Bothmer stated, ‘some might well think that Cook’s research has rendered any further presentation of the subject unnecessary.’14 This refers to a chapter in Cook (1960) headed, ‘The History of the Study of Greek Vase Painting’ in which he gives a concise but thorough overview of the early study of Greek vases and would, at first, appear to preclude this book. However, Cook looked mainly at the scholarship of Attic and Corinthian vases, only including a few South Italian and Etruscan pieces and referring to little study before the 18th century. He covered all this in a few pages which are mostly unreferenced and without bibliography, so it is very limited and confined to what was already readily available. Also, the first hundred years of the serious study of South Italian vase-painting (the 18th and early 19th centuries) has so many aspects, so many eccentric theories mixed with some very perceptive insights, that there is ample material in the extensive and rambling scholarship of the period to discover new avenues and viewpoints on the subject.

This book will offer an overview of the whole period from the first evidence of the Roman rediscovery of figured vases until the end of the 20th century and the death of Trendall.18 It will look at how figured vases were received in each successive period and how this determined the way they were studied. First, the Roman urge to collect vases purely as both decorative curiosities found locally and as trophies form Corinth. Then after many centuries of silence, the mediaeval discovery of vases in Tuscany and particularly around Arezzo and the belief that these vases must be supernatural because the painting on them was beyond the skills of contemporary artists. This was followed by the later use of vases as complements to the display of sculpture and to their being regarded as of secondary importance. By the 18th century, vase-painting was being studied for its iconography and as comparative material with ancient texts. Finally the search for the origin of the vases themselves became the great debate, and these supposed origins were also used for political ends. In the 19th century, classification took over as the main type of scholarship: ‘classification precedes collection, without their endowment with names they could not have been collected’19. In the 20th century, images of life depicted in vase-paintings are used as a vehicle through which the ancient world is understood.

Since the 15th century, Rome had been considered the centre of the rediscovery of antiquity, and the realisation that figured vases might be of Greek origin disrupted this view. Italian scholars, however, wanted to hold on to the dominance of Italy in the study of the ancient world, and within Italy rivalry existed between the Italian states with Tuscan scholars insisting on an Etruscan origin for vases and scholars in Naples and the south preferring a Greek connection.15 Collections of vases were presented as ‘Etruscan’, from an assumption based on the location of their find sites and a stubborn refusal to accept non-Italic

South Italian vases have importance in the understanding of the rediscovery, collection and reception of Greek art. In   See infra Prince Canino p.103.   E.g. if 19th century scholars had a consensus that a certain vase shape should be called an oinochoe, this would automatically affect S.I. vase scholarship by an umbrella effect. 18   The huge expansion of vase scholarship toward the end of the 20th century and its divergence from connoisseurship toward applied scientific methods would be too wide a remit for this study, and requires another thesis. 19   Elsner & Cardinal (1994) 1-2. 16 17

 Trendall (1990) 230.   Hoffmann (1979) 61. 13   Cook (1992) 356. 14  Von Bothmer (1987) 184. He seemingly agrees with this as he goes on, ‘Yet it may be appropriate on the occasion of this symposium to refresh our memory’, and then gives a précis of Cook’s history. 15   E.g. the Tuscan Gori and the Neapolitan Pancrazi. 11

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Introduction recent years, reception has become an important academic approach for understanding the way that antiquity has been received and perceived in the post-classical world.20 In an early reference to the concept of classical reception, Winckelmann referred to the impossibility of seeing ancient artifacts as their creators saw them and remarked that trying to see the ancient world through the remains of ancient artifacts was like ‘a maiden, standing on the shore of the ocean, following with tearful eyes her departing lover with no hope of ever seeing him again, fancies that in the distant sail she sees the image of her beloved. Like that maid we have nothing but a shadowy outline left of the object of our wishes’.21 Reception will inevitably subsume the way that South Italian vases were consequently studied, their collection and display, their influence on fashion and taste, and a rekindling of interest in the classical world, each era receiving the vases with the added baggage of the previous eras. Kurtz said, ‘…it is possible to cross the disciplines of archaeology, history, history of art, history of scholarship and history of taste, with literary as well as archaeological evidence in hand’.22 And these disciplines were certainly mixed in the world of the 18th century savant. Vase publications inevitably led to their artistic reception and provided a strong influence on taste and design, particularly in England, but also in Germany, France, Italy and Russia. Much of the early influence, for example on Wedgwood, can be directly traced to South Italian vases, although the taste was universally referred to at the time as ‘Etruscan’. The focus of this work will be the history of scholarship. It will look at the aspects of study that each subsequent century thought important, the varied forms scholarly debate took, and the responses which ordered the direction of research. Gould said ‘the science of classification is truly the mirror of our thoughts, its changes through time are the best guide to the history of human perceptions’.23 Later, Bounia observed ‘the past is largely defined by what interest people develop in it. In studying the growth of a particular society’s historical awareness, it is necessary to pay close attention to the intellectual trends in the present that give rise to the awareness of the past’.24

example being Hamilton building his first collection from tombs around Naples, meaning that it contained a large proportion of South Italian vases. I will also look at how ancient vases were (and to a certain extent still are) regarded compared with the more revered subjects of ancient literature and classical sculpture. Whereas classical architecture and sculpture were copied from the 16th century to show power and status, classical vase-painting was copied in the 18th and 19th centuries for more domestic purposes and to recreate an ideal of ancient Greek life in European interiors. Vasepainting was also compared to surviving Greek literature to see how representations of myths could be matched.25 The study of classical sculpture has overshadowed that of pottery since the beginnings of the rediscovery of the classical world. Books on ancient sculpture with engraved plates appeared as early as the beginning of the 1500s,26 whereas the first book to illustrate an actual figured vase was not published until 1690.27 Modern treatises on classical art, neoclassicism, museums and country house collections predominantly concern sculpture and often make no mention of figured vases. The disparity between the number of modern books that illustrate, for instance, the Apollo Belvedere, compared with any that illustrate a famous figured vase is huge, yet there is potentially much more to be learned about the classical world from the subject matter of vase-painting than there is from a statue that may well be a copy executed centuries after the now lost original. Experts cannot agree whether certain sculptures are Greek originals or Roman copies, or, in some cases, even whether they are ancient or 18th century copies;28 on the other hand, red-figure vases can often be dated stylistically to within a decade and can be authenticated by methods such as thermoluminescence. The topic is, therefore, large, but I feel there is value in the breadth of the overview. The flesh of this work will be built around the skeleton of the names of those who featured in the long pursuit to deduce the origins of South Italian blackand red-figure vases and the fiercely opposed patriotic camps that were formed insisting on either an Etruscan or South Italian origin. No relevant names in the history of vase study, I hope, have been omitted from this work, for most works continually refer to the theories of forebears and contemporaries, either in support or criticism. Some, who in their time must have been prominent in the circles of vase scholarship, have now been largely forgotten and have disappeared into obscurity.29 The chapters are chronological and each covers a period in which vases were discovered, scrutinised and commented on. Their first exhumation in Roman times is detailed by passages

The history of collections is also of importance to this study as the contents of collections can reveal how certain types of figured vases were favoured over others and were disseminated to a wider audience, thereby gaining more prominence and being more closely studied. Vases could not be studied at leisure until they were placed in a safe, permanent environment, so collections were the basis of vase study and subsequent publications. The sites from which collectors obtained their vases also determined what type of vase predominated in their collections, a good   Gombrich’s ‘beholder’s share’, Gombrich (1959) 7. Baxandall (19789) 23 took reception further by attempting to get back to the ‘period eye’ of a work’s original beholders. Hardwick (2003) and Martindale & Thomas (2006) 1-13 see reception as the main way forward for the study of classical antiquity itself. 21  Winckelmann (1881) II. 364-5. 22   Kurtz (2004) 31. 23   Purcell & Gould (1986) 14. 24   Bounia (2004) 45. 20

  See Millin, Creuzer, Millingen et al infra p.85-87.   Nicoletto da Modena, see infra n.167. 27   La Chausse, see infra p.33. 28   E.g. Townley’s Clytie, Jones (1990). 29   E.g. Cecil Smith (1859-1944, later aggrandised to Sir Cecil HarcourtSmith), author of vol. III of The Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum (1896), whose opinion was often quoted in late 19th century texts, is now mostly forgotten. 25 26

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery in ancient authors that most likely refer to fictile vases.30 Later, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, painted vases were a subject of wonderment when they were thought to have fallen from heaven. It was not until the 18th century that serious vase scholarship began, but it was dogged by nationalism, treasure hunting and competition. Apart from Winckelmann, the 18th century was dominated by French and Italian scholarship (Gori, de Caylus, Passeri, Denon and d’Hancarville et al.), for even the vase section in Dempster’s treatise was added by the Italian scholar Buonarroti,31 and Hamilton’s first collection was written up and published by d’Hancarville, a French adventurer. However, after Lanzi’s publication of 1806, and the discovery of vases in Greece, the 19th century saw real advances. The analysis and cataloguing that took place was taken up predominantly by German scholars: pioneers such as Gerhard, Panofka, Kestner and Müller, followed by Jahn, von Brunn and Kramer, and finally Kekulé, Heydemann, Reinach, Furtwängler, and the Italian scholar Patroni, who all used more scientific methods and put order into the discipline. When classicism went out of fashion in favour of romanticism in the 1830s, this left analytical (mainly German) classical archaeologists free of the baggage left by the (mainly English) idealist classical dreamers, grandtourists, Pompeii-inspired interior decorators and eclectic cabinet hoarders,32 and the argle-bargle of Italian and French sciolists, to get on with discovering the true origins of ancient artifacts.33 Finally the 20th century saw the era of Beazley and Trendall and the huge work of listing and subdividing the South Italian regions and isolating the workshops.

  See infra, chapter I.   This is the spelling on Buonarroti’s publications: where other writers use variations I quote them. 32   Winckelmann, who was obliged to show many English dignitaries around the ancient sites and see them carry away many artifacts, referrred to them (particularly Lord Baltimore) in a letter of January 1763 as außerordentlich, ‘out of order’, (Briefe ii (1954) 285). In an unpublished letter of introduction for a Mr. Dashwood, who wanted to be shown around Naples, Charles Greville wrote to William Hamilton, ‘Dear Uncle, After having been so much deceived by some of our countrymen already, I am very cautious in recommending any to you’ (BL Add. MSS 40714/31). 33   Howard (1992) 32 would disagree with this, placing it in Rome some 80 years earlier: ‘The custom of private hoarding and idiosyncratic manipulation of antiquities gave way by the mid-eighteenth century to the establishment of public, national collections … of professional scholars inspired by excavation, research, publication, display, critical review, and preservation – a situation initiated by Albani, Winckelmann, and Cavaceppi.’ 30 31

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Chapter I From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century This chapter covers a large chronological range from the early centuries BC/AD (when the evidence ranges from literary references, wall-painting and archaeological finds) through the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries AD when, besides written mention, the most positive evidence is the copying of black- and red-figure designs by contemporary artists and potters, and concludes with the first half of the 18th century. There is scant enough material for some of the centuries, and apparently nothing for the period between the 2nd and the 13th centuries AD. Added to this is the problem of proof that sources are actually referring to figured vases, or in some cases whether the vessels mentioned are even fictile.

many unusable vessels such as bottomless oinochoai,5 or lekythoi with sealed off interiors from which only a few drops can be poured have been found, suggesting they were never utilitarian household items.6 Vase shapes were obviously first developed for use by the living, so if certain figured vases were made only for funerary purposes, there must have been a time when change of use came about, even if over a prolonged period. There is also the anomaly of repaired vases, although repairs on easily breakable objects do not necessarily prove daily use. Also, Attic vases found in Etruscan and South Italian tombs bearing kalos names of boys, who could not have been known in Italy, were surely made for the Athenian market and must have been sent to Italy later and bought second hand. Further, the Apulian red-figure sherds found on the floors of two houses in excavations at San Stefano in Puglia in 19767 ranged in date from early to late 4th century BC, suggesting that the earlier sherds had remained in the same household for nearly a century. Then we have Vitruvius’s story of the dead girl whose nurse placed the cups that pleased her in life on top of her tomb: ‘Post sepulturam eius, quibus ea virgo viva poculis delectabatur, nutrix collecta et conposita in calatho pertulit ad monumentum,’8 This story poses the problem of whether the cups were fictile or precious metal. It is unlikely that precious metal would be left outside a tomb, or that the servant would be allowed to take away precious objects. Further evidence for the use of pottery rather than metal can be found in Athenaeus:

Around the 280s BC,1 South Italian red-figure vases ceased to be interred in tombs; we can only speculate whether subsequently the figure-painters were obsolete or adapted their skills to new crafts such as adding white onto black glaze in the new fashion for tendrils, spirals and foliage. As early as the 1920s Ernst Buschor gave a fanciful but striking description of what he believed may have happened:2 Sentiment and light, the great achievements of 4th century art, were the ruin of the decorative silhouette style. [he goes on] the new tendencies of art were fatal to the red-figured style…which as is proved by finds at Alexandria, continued to exist down into the early Hellenistic age. Rightly recognising that the days of the draughtsman and his decorative figure style were past and gone, the ceramic workshops of the late 4th century more and more gave up the red-figured technique. The great increase of the means of colouring, which is to be assumed for the late painting, the complete suppression of formal tendencies in favour of impressionism did not permit the silhouette style even a subsidiary place. [he ends] Painted pottery is completely driven from the field.3

Concerning the use of silver utensils, noble Ulpian, I am led to make observation by what Alexis has said in The Refugee: “For where crockery is exposed for cooks to hire.” Down to Macedonian times people at dinner were served from utensils of crockery, as my compatriot Juba says. 9 Athenaeus goes on to say that it was the Romans who shifted their mode of living in the direction of greater luxury, and Cleopatra, not being able to change the name, called a gold or silver vessel ‘κεραμέοις’.10

P.E. Arias said: ‘There were vain attempts at regeneration, such as the attempts at polychromy on Kerch vases, but they could not save vase painting as a continuing vital art.’4

The very term ‘vase’ has accrued much baggage over the centuries and altered our perception of these objects.

Black- and red-figure vases are most often found in graves and to a lesser extent in sanctuaries and domestic sites. Also,

  Bottomless oinochoai are common, for instance, in Apulian r-f of the last quarter of the 4th century BC. 6   Arias (1962) 19 observed: Most of them [vases] have been found in graves and this has led scholars to give the scenes a funerary interpretation’. Margot Schmidt (in Mayo & Hamma (1982) 24) suggests these vases were bottomless to prohibit profane use, or as ritual vessels into which libations could be poured to flow directly into the grave. 7   Berge (1977) 108. 8  Vitruvius IV.i.9. 9  Athen. Deipnosophistae VI. 229b. 10  Athen. Deipnosophistae VI. 229c. 5

 Trendall (1987) 3 dates the end of Paestan red-figure more exactly to the Roman invasion of 273 BC (in 1936 he had put the end slightly earlier at c. 285 BC). 2   He may have been put in mind of this by similar things occurring in art in his own day, such as impressionism and Art Nouveau, when formal Victorianism was being ‘driven from the field’. 3   Buschor (1921b) 157-9. 4  Arias (1962) 19. 1

5

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 1 Painting of a bell-krater on a wall in the House of the Dioscuri, Pompeii

Originating from the Italian vaso, denoting a pot or vessel, the term vase has taken on a whole new concept in the English vernacular to describe a pretty container to hold flowers,11 despite being the long accepted art-historical / archaeological terminology for ancient vessels. Some prefer to use the term pot or vessel to avoid the ‘flowerholder’ connotation, but it could also be said that artifacts that are now regarded as being of such art-historical importance should not be referred to in the vocabulary of cooking utensils. Then again, Pliny refers to potters as making containers for wine as one part of a larger utilitarian industry, making water-pipes, tiles, bricks and earthenware coffins.12 Pliny was not referring to southern Italy in the 4th century, but we can assume that pottery production in the Hellenic world did not alter significantly during these centuries, and there is little enough surviving written evidence of the trade from this period.13

How long would the red-figure pottery left above ground survive? If red-figure had gone out of fashion, would the remaining pottery be cherished and valued and still used for symposia or for more workaday uses? How long would it have lasted in daily use in the following (often violent) centuries? Martial makes mention of an antique cup among his list of other drinking vessels: Pocula archetypa Non est ista recens, nec nostri Gloria caeli: primus in his Mentor, dum facit illa, bibit.14 These are questions that are not answered by surviving ancient texts, or, so far, by archaeological excavation. However, we do have some clues: on the dado of the south wall in the peristyle of the House of the Dioscuri at Pompeii is a 1st century AD painting of a bell-krater of late 4th century shape, which appears to be painted in the Gnathian style [fig.1].15 If the picture follows the common pattern of Pompeian wall painting in that the pictures have a connection with the lives of the occupants, perhaps the owner was a South Italian Greek, or even a wealthy kiln owner. It can only be surmised whether this vase was

  Disney (1846) iii: xxi believed this to have been the case in ancient times: ‘some must have been made only to hold flowers or perfumes; or as mere ornaments to stand on the tables of the rich, or the toilets of the ladies.’ 12   Pl. N.H. XXXV. xlvi. 159. 13   Although by the 5th century BC potters’ wheels had been in use for millennia, an early literary mention comes from Xenophon Symposium VII: 2 ‘When they had finished (singing), a potter’s wheel was brought in for the dancing girl on which she intended performing some feats of juggling’. A similar scene can be seen on a Paestan skyphos attributed to the Asteas Group: Ashmolean Mus. 1945.43, RVP 2/33, pl. 24 f-g, where a girl acrobat performs a handstand on a potter’s wheel being turned by a Phlyax actor. 11

  Martial Epigrams bk. XIV 93.   Richardson (1955) 111 & 155-9, using the methods of Morelli and Beazley see infra chapter VI, attributes the whole peristyle to the Fourth Style Perseus Painter who, ‘did not leave parts to assistants’. 14 15

6

From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century painted from life and, if so, whether it had survived as a family heirloom, or been found by very early excavators cum tomb-robbers. There are instances of replicas of 5th century Greek vase shapes being made at Roman settlements, such as the two 2nd century BC metalware type volute kraters found in the Fimbrian destruction level of 85 BC at Troia.16

Sparkes dismisses this, saying ‘it was customary at one time to single out Strabo VIII. 6. 23 … [but] any possible connection of such prices with what we call Corinthian pottery was abandoned by most scholars long ago’.20 But Sparkes ignores the possibility that Strabo’s ‘Corinthian mortuaries’ were Attic vases placed in Corinthian tombs. In Corinth’s North Cemetery, towards the middle of the 5th century, Attic pottery easily outnumbered the local ware, although this number declined at the time of (but was not necessarily caused by) the Peloponnesian War.21 This suggests that it is likely to have been Athenian figured vases that the Romans were collecting and Strabo was calling ‘Corinthian mortuaries’. Payne said ‘it is difficult to imagine that archaic Corinthian vases would have won even momentary popularity in Rome’.22

Suetonius gives an insight into the breaking-in of tombs and the discovery of vases within three hundred years of their interment: Cum in colonia Capua deducti lege Julia coloni ad exstruendes villas vetustissima sepulcra disicerent idque eo studiosius facerent, quod aliquantum vasculorum operis antiqui scrutantes reperiebant…17

Pliny the Elder tells us of the 4th century Sicyonian artist, Pausias, who, he said, was the first artist to use encaustic:

It is possible that the vases referred to by Suetonius were made of bronze, but this is unlikely considering that the vast majority of vessels that are still being found in Greek settlement tombs in Capua are made of pottery.18 It is clear that they had no idea of the actual age of the vases, except that they were old (‘vasculorum operis antiqui’) so there was apparently no established tradition of the chronological history of the origin of these tombs. However, they did know that these tombs were in some way Greek from inscriptions found there as Suetonius goes on:

Pamphilus quoque, Apellis praeceptor, non pinxisse solum encausta, sed etiam docuisse traditur Pausian Sicyonium, primum in hoc genere nobilem.’23 ‘Sicyone ingenio Pausiae pictoris atque Glycerae coronariae dilectae admodum illi, cum opera eius pictura imitaretur, illi provocans variaret, essetque certamen artis ac naturae.24

…tabula aenea in monimento, in quo dicebatur Capys conditor Capuae sepultus, inventa est conscripta litteris verbisque Graecis hac sententia…

Again: amavit in iuventa Glyceram municipem suam, inventricem coronarum, certandoque imitatione eius ad numerosissimam florum varietatem perduxit artem illam. postremo pinxit et ipsam sedentem cum corona, quae e nobilissimis tabula est, appellata stephanoplokos.25

This is something many of their counterpart tomb-breakers, some eighteen hundred years later, were stubbornly slow to accept. Another instance of the Roman taste for Greek vases is mentioned by Strabo. When Caesar restored Corinth, the removal of the ruins uncovered tombs and:

From Pliny’s description of Pausias’ floral painting, it is widely believed that his work heavily influenced the garland designs on Gnathian and the foliage around the heads on ornate Apulian ware.26

… they left no grave unransacked; so that, well supplied with such things and disposing of them at a high price, they filled Rome with Corinthian “mortuaries,”… and in particular the earthenware. Now at the outset the earthenware was very highly prized … but later they ceased to care much for them, since the supply of earthen vessels failed.19

A copy of Pausias’ Stephanoplocus was sold for two talents to the Roman Lucius Lucullus in the 1st century BC.27 This huge price could be further evidence of the fashion for 4th century Greek painting in 1st century Rome. The 19th century traveller, George Dennis, in his The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, observed in 1848:

  Hayes (1995) 177-183.   Suet. Jul. 81. 18  Nørskov (2002) 27 actually inserts the word ‘earthen’ into the translation of Suetonius’ text. Spivey suggests most tombs were robbed centuries before and the ceramics were left as worthless before Hamilton’s time. He cites the intact Regolini-Galassi tomb which contained a mass of gold and silver, Rasmussen & Spivey (1991)135. See also Vickers & Gill (1994); however, their interpretation of texts to mean vases were made of metal has met with little support, and their theory was convincingly refuted by Dyfri Williams (1996). 19   Strabo 8. 6. 23. see Payne’s Necrocorinthia (1931) 348, Payne said there may be a corruption in the text and also criticizes the modern Loeb translation for using the word ‘mortuaries’. 16

  Sparkes (1996) 36.  Palmer (1964) 152 suggests this was due to a Corinthian preference for b-f which had ceased production in Athens, causing trade to decline before the war began. MacDonald (1981) 159 said: ‘the [Peloponnesian] war did not adversely affect the distribution of Attic pottery’. See also MacDonald (1982) 113-4. 22   Payne (1931) 348. 23   Pl. N. H. XXXV. xl. 123. 24   Pl. N.H. XXI. ii. 4. 25   Pl. N.H. XXXV. xl. 125. 26  See OCD. (1970) 793, OCD (2003) 1129, & Griffin (1982) 150, 154-6. 27   Pl. N.H. XXXV. xl. 125.

17

20 21

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 2a The frieze of the Portland Vase

Figure 2b A collage of images from Apulian vases Dennis is perhaps wrong in this assumption: the despoiling of distant Greek tombs was one thing, the desecration of the tombs of the Etruscans, who had been absorbed into the Roman Empire, and tombs so close to Rome in full view of the populace, whose own burial grounds were within reach, must have been taboo.

We know that the sepulchres of Corinth and of Capua were ransacked by the Romans in the time of Julius Cæsar, for the sake of these painted vases, which were called necro-Corinthian,28 and were then highly prized and of immense value; the art of making them having been lost; but how it came to pass that the Romans never worked the vast mines of the same treasures in Etruria, some almost within sight of the Seven-hilled City, it is difficult to comprehend. They could hardly have been ignorant of the custom of the Etruscans to bury these vases in their sepulchres, and religious scruples could not have deterred them from spoliation in Etruria more than in Greece or the south of Italy.29

I make a note here of the significance of the Portland Vase as possible evidence of the reception of red-figure vases in the early Roman imperial period. Although the vase is believed to have been made in the time of Augustus, it has striking design similarities with Greek vases. The shape is suggestive of an amphora or pelike,30 and the frieze appears   Even more so in its original state as it was discovered during its restoration in 1988 that it had had its base removed and the edge trimmed when it was repaired in antiquity, Williams (1989) 24. Another close study has suggested that the base projected down into a point (Roman 30

  Dennis is surely referring to Strabo 8. 6. 23.   Dennis (1883) xcvii.

28 29

8

From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century to be inspired by red-figure pottery, with the lighter figures against a darker background.31 The iconography of the frieze suggests Apulian vasepainting, in that four of the seven figures are reclining, a popular tableau arrangement in Apulian vase-painting. There is also a stele, and a man framed by the entrance to a naiskos, both reminiscent of offering scenes particularly popular on Apulian vases [fig.2] Further, the Eros flying above the supine figure is a common addition in Apulian scenes, but rarer in Campanian or Lucanian. Although the musculature of the figures on the Portland Vase is of a much higher standard of detail and realism than the often sketchy physiques of the Apulian figures, the overall similarities are striking. I am not suggesting that the Portland Vase is a copy of a specific Apulian vase, but that the story depicted on it has been given a conscious Apulian lay-out. That such an exquisite and technically advanced piece of Roman glass-work was based overtly on 4th century BC South Italian vase types adds to the other evidence (ancient texts and archaeological discoveries) that red-figure vases were fashionable in early imperial Rome. Relief work very similar in design (but moulded, not cut) to that on the Portland Vase can also be seen on a 4th century r-f Apulian relief hydria from Metaponto showing a woman holding out a bird to a girl [fig.3].32 None of the reference works on the Portland Vase make this connection.33 The Portland vase also has its importance in some of the earliest published studies of ancient vases for, although not the first detailed illustration of a figured vase, plate lxxxiv in Gronovius (1702) vol.xii, showing the Portland Vase is probably the first detailed ‘rolled-out’

Figure 3 4th century Apulian red-figure relief hydria from Metaponto (BM G.11)

picture of the whole circumference of a vase as one panel with a very accurate replication of each figure.34 Further evidence for the taste for red-figure vases in imperial Rome can be seen in Giovanni Iacopi’s 1963 publication of the results of his excavation of Tiberius’ cave at Sperlonga, where he unearthed the majority of the fragments of two Attic red-figure vases: a 28cm high oinochoe, with a Dionysian gigantomachy; and a 35cm pelike showing obverse and reverse scenes of Dionysus and a dancing satyr.35 Were these used to adorn the cave, or were they utilitarian? They are both containers, so could have been used for parties, yet they are both very becoming and could have been there to adorn the cave. They were seemingly not valued highly enough to take away when the cave was abandoned. Nørskov refutes the idea that Greek vases were collectable in ‘the Roman age’, saying the vases found in Tiberius’ cave are a unique case, and goes on to cite the lack of vase fragments in Pompeian houses as proof against their popularity,36 but ignores the many illustrations of Greek-style vases seen on Pompeian frescoes.

storage-amphora style) with a knob on the end, similar to the ‘Blue Vase’ contemporary with the Portland Vase, Gudenrath & Whitehouse (1990) 109. 31   Susan Walker, however, believes it was reproducing the effect of relief sculpture, and gives as an example the Erechtheion frieze which is composed of figures in white Pentelic marble set against a background of blue limestone. This monument was well known in Augustan Rome, and the Portland Vase represents the white pentelic marble against blue limestone. John Flaxman, the sculptor working with Wedgwood, understood jasper-ware to be copying sculpture, not ceramics. (Walker, pers. comm. 2004), see also Walker (2004). It is not clear whether images from the Acropolis were familiar to Wedgwood at the time of the copying of the Portland Vase in 1787, but it is likely that he saw Stuart & Revett (1762). 32   BM G.11. There is also some resemblance to Plakettenvasen (also called Pergamene ware, or certain types, mainly from S.I. Sicily & Crete, West Slope ware): black glaze with moulded seams and applications, made in Attica from 5th cen, Apulia in the late 4th and 3rd cent and Campana A,B,C in Etruria late 4th to 2nd cen. which Beazley (1947) 230-1 called ‘Malacena ware’, and Rome from late 3rd to at least 1st cen. BC. See Hayes (1984) & Dohrn (1985) 77-106, pl. 62-75. 33   Wedgwood (1790), the avid Etrurian and copier of r-f vases, does not see the similarity in his long description of the Portland Vase, Lloyd (1848) only saw the connection to a gem or cameo. Hinks (1929) does not mention r-f. Ashmole (1967) 7 does refer to two Italiote vases where the problem of how to position two heroes in a scene is compared to the Portland Vase, but he does not suggest the Portland Vase is copied from the r-f style. Williams (1989) 30 said: ‘Most scholars have linked the figures either with classical mythology, or with contemporary Roman subjects expressed in mythological terms…[there have been] three hundred years of attempts to interpret the Portland Vase, the debate continues.’

  Although the scene had been reproduced as a picture in reverse, engraved by Bernardino Capitelli in Siena in 1633. 35   Iacopi (1963) figs. 152-156. 36   Nørskov (2002) 27-8. 34

9

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery The Mediaeval and Renaissance Rediscovery of Etruscan Tombs and Early Mention of Red-Figure Vases

wondrous for their nobility were mentioned by sages in their books like Esidero and Sidilio and others. They made them with caked together earth thin as wax and perfect in form in every variation. On these vases were designed and sculpted all kinds of plants, leaves and flowers and every animal you could think of in every action, wondrously and perfected they appear before us performing by nature.

Etruscan tombs had a particular fascination for savants and travellers from ancient times onwards because of their visibility and accessibility, and the vases found in them surely sparked the origins of figured vase scholarship. Many fantastic tales are recorded regarding them: in the 12th century, William of Malmsbury in his Chronicle of the Kings of England, relates how an Aquitanian monk who had travelled in Italy told him of his penetration of a tomb in a hillside in Italy where ‘many had entered and perished in the labyrinth’ and how he and his companions had used a thread, ‘Like Daedalus had fashioned for Theseus’ so that they could find their way out. When they had gone a long distance inside, ‘we beheld a pool…A bridge of bronze united the opposite banks, beyond which were huge golden horsemen.’ A guardian ‘beat the water to cause a mist to bar our way across’.37 In the late Middle Ages the idea became widespread that the ancient vases being excavated were natural formations that had grown out of the ground.38 This led to the legend of Magic Crocks which became sought after by rock collectors and alchemists, another common belief was that the pots were made underground by gnomes.39

All these were painted in such colours as blues41 and reds (mostly red) with shining[?] and thin, not having body/consistency. And these colours were so perfect that after being buried under ground the earth did not corrupt or ruin them. When one digs in our time for some reason or another in the city, or outside it within a radius of two miles, one finds great quantities of pieces of vases some thicker in places than others. It was presumed that they had been there much more than 1,000 years and finding them so colourful and fresh it seemed they were buried [made] over a period of time and the earth had not been able to consume them. On them were all kinds of plants, leaves, flowers and animals and other very noble things, so for their own delight the conoscitori made the vases disappear [kept them hidden?] and the non conoscitori both out of ignorance and non recognition of their beauty simply threw them away. One finds sculpted on these vases the thin, the fat, the laughing, the crying, the dead, the living, the old, the young, the naked, the clothed, the armed, the disarmed, on horseback, on foot, crowds, flocks, swarms, formations, groups, take your pick: battles to be admired and sex and lust in every conceivable mode, hunting, fishing and bird-catching. All these are depicted so well that the engraver42 must have been familiar with chiaro and scuro43 and if the figure was near or far. One can find spirits in the form of naked boys bearing penises of all sizes.44 Fighting men, some in all kinds of chariots with horses attached flying across the area.

Actual credible references to tombs that include any mention of vases are very rare in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the main ones being the writings of Ristoro d’Arezzo, Antonio Ivano, Giorgio Vasari, and the work of artists such as Piero della Francesca, Carpaccio, and some 15th and 16th century Maiolica makers. The earliest evidence of the recognition of Greek vase-painting in the Middle Ages, cited by Gombrich,40 is the copying of a palmette by Bonaventura Berlinghieri on a panel-painting in the church of San Francesco at Pescia near Lucce, dated to circa 1235, that appears to come from an Apulian vase. In 1282, Ristoro d’Arezzo wrote Libro della Composizione del Mondo, in which he refers to red-figure vases dug up in Arezzo. He said that they were highly valued and ‘treated like sacred objects.’ They were of ‘the most delicate craftsmanship’ and he thought them beyond the creativity of man. His approach to the vases that were being found (the origin of which he had no concept) at such an early date, is captivating.

‘I got nearly half a bowl of a vase on which were sculpted such natural and fine things that the conoscitori who saw it raved and praised it and going out of their minds appeared nearly stupid and the non-conoscitori wanted to break it and throw it away. And when some of these pieces got into the hands of painters and draughtsmen or other conoscitori they treated them like holy relics, wondering how human nature could rise to making such subtle artifacts: the proportions of the vases and the colours, they say these works are divine, these

He wrote: We have mentioned the earth and now we wish to mention the very noble and miraculous artifact that is made from it. Vases were made for all times. The very noble and fine/thin artifacts in ancient times in the noble city of Arezzo where we were born, this same city was once called Orelia. From there vases

  This presents a problem: were they mixing up strata? Some Daunian and Attic Kerch pottery has blue, but perhaps they were not distinguishing between Moorish pottery or more recent Maiolica found nearer the surface. Albeit, he does say ‘mostly red’. 42   This reference to an engraver, and the two previous references in the text to ‘sculpted’, may suggest applied relief, or Plakettenvasen. 43   Clearness and obscurity: the artist’s use of light and dark in a picture. 44   Portando: holding, carrying? Pendoli: penises? Large penises would suggest phlyakes, but they are not naked. Perhaps their padded costumes were thought to be flesh. It may alternatively refer to garlands. 41

  Malmsbury (c.1143) ii.170.   Deugossi (c.1470) Bk.xii, & Miechów (1519) v. 39   Sklenář (1983) 16. 40   Gombrich (1959) 31. 37 38

10

From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century vessels fell from heaven,45 not being able to know how they were made, neither in form, nor in colour, nor any other technique. It was thought that those noble, subtle, fine vases which were brought here for all the world, were sent by God throughout the ages to Arezzo to grace the noble quarters and the rivers where that city was placed.46

the same time, the Italian rediscovery of antiquity is often positioned as being Rome-focused, but evidence of an awareness of figured vases determines that Greek artifacts were prized long before the western rediscovery of Greece in the early 19th century. A letter dated 18th November 1466 to Nicodemo Tranchedini, the Milanese ambassador to Florence, from Antonio Ivano (a tutor who was taking Tranchedini’s son on an educational tour of Italy), gives a description of the contents of an Etruscan tomb that they had just visited at Volterra:

Reports by Vasari47 of kilns containing sherds (spoilers?) and whole vases uncovered at Arezzo some 200 years later suggest that many of the vases referred to by Ristoro were made locally and were therefore Etruscan or Arretine. Attic vases have been found at Arezzo, but no Campanian or Apulian vases have so far been found there.48

plura etiam vasa fictilia sed semifracta in eodem antro ex(s)tabant, quorum quidem varie species me satis oblectarunt. 53

Archaeological proof that some Etruscan tombs had been opened in the Middle Ages was established when, in 1960, C.M. Lerici, using the Proton Magnetometer,49 discovered the Bartoccini Tomb in Tarquinia. He inserted a photographic probe he had developed (to see if a tomb was worth opening) through a four inch hole in the roof and took a series of flash photographs. This revealed that the tomb had been opened in the 13th or early 14th century as it had inscriptions and a cross of that period scratched into the fresco.50

The tomb is almost certainly Etruscan from the description of reclining figures: quorum sculpta tegmina iacentium varias effigies et vetustos corporum habitus repraesentant.54 The area around Volterra suffers from erosion of the sedimentary rock and many such tombs may well have been accidentally revealed by natural causes at an even earlier date.55 There are other instances of tombs being discovered in this way, for instance in 1565 a Spanish engineer accidentally fell into an Etruscan tomb in Orbetello and discovered figured vases.56

The 15th and 16th Centuries The 15th century was the first century in which people started collecting works of art for their curiosity, artistic value and beauty (as opposed to hoarding booty), since the Romans invented collecting in the 1st century BC. Elsner said ‘Ancient Rome is more than just the supreme paradigm of collectors, its collections were and are our canon’.51 The canon of ancient art is essentially sculptural and in modern studies of the Renaissance reception of ancient art, sculpture is usually foregrounded as of prime importance52 and recognised from ancient literary sourses and occasionally even remaining in situ throughout the Middle Ages, but collectors also valued smaller objects such as vases, coins, gems and intaglios which also made their way into artistic appropriations of antique models. At

Extracts from the life of the Tuscan painter Lazzaro Vasari57 (1399?-1452) by his grandson Giorgio Vasari published in 1550 confirm the evidence from Ristoro d’Arezzo that ancient pottery production in Arezzo had been prolific: He left a son Giorgio, who devoted all his time to antique earthenware vessels of Arezzo, and during the time that M. Gentile Urbinato was bishop of Arezzo, he rediscovered the old method of colouring earthenware vessels in red and black, which had been employed by the old Aretines…As he was an industrious man he made great vases on the wheel, some a braccia58 and a half in height, which may still be seen in his house. It is said that one day, as he was looking for vases in a place where he thought that the ancients worked, he found in a clay-field at the ponte alla Calciarella,59 in a place of the same name, at a depth of three braccia, three arches of ancient kilns, and about them a quantity

  It would be interesting to know if Ristoro had access to the writings of the 3rd century AD Menander Rhetor, who wrote, ‘You should describe the statue of the god, compare it with Zeus at Olympia and Athena on the Acropolis at Athens, then add: “What Pheidias, what Daedalus fashioned such an image! Perhaps this statue fell from heaven”’ (On Epideictic 445. 15-19). 46   Arezzo (1859 ed) 137-8. This passage has been translated by C. Dionisotti of KCL from the first printing of the 13th century Italian MS in 1859. Certain words are open to various shades of interpretation. 47   See infra p.28. 48   See Trendall’s listings (1967) & (1978). 49   A device used for discovering the whereabouts of tombs by detecting abnormalities in ground density. 50   Lerici (1960) 390-95. Unlike other tombs that he illustrates, Lerici’s photographs of the Bartoccini tomb stop intriguingly some distance from the floor, and he does not state whether the grave goods were intact. 51   Elsner & Cardinal (1994) 156. For Roman collecting see Bounia (2004), for Renaissance collecting see Findlen (1989) 59-78, Lissarrague & Reed (1997) 275-294. 52   Bober & Rubinstein (1986), Waywell (1992) 295. 45

  MS 834 in the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, published by Spencer (1966) 96. 54   Ibid. 55   A poem of 1454 by L.Vitelli, published in the correspondence of a Florentine official (Filelfo 1508), alludes to the opening of an Etruscan tomb in Corneto, Tarquinia: ‘Quin etiam effigies veterumque sepulcra virorum, Sunt et semideum sunt simulacra deum.’ 56   Breed (1997) 2, Cook (1972) 287. 57   A member of a family from Cortona, ‘engaged in the manufacture of earthen vessels’ and a ‘close working companion of Piero della Francesca’, Vasari (1970 ed.) 351. 58  An arm’s length. 59   Presumably the point is that calce is also the word for clay. 53

11

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 4 Piero della Francesco, fresco of an angel in the church of San Francesco, Arezzo and female heads on Apulian red-figure vases 12

From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century

Figure 5 Piero della Francesco, ‘Adam Announcing his Death’ and details from a Campanian bell-krater

13

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery of fragments of broken vessels with four whole ones. These he presented to Lorenzo the Magnificent when he came on a visit to Arezzo, having been introduced by the bishop, a matter which gave rise to the subsequent relations between him and that most illustrious house.60

it balance on the shelf), or an exaleiptron, or lekanis lid.65 Greenhalgh said: ‘They remain the earliest representations of Greek pots in Italian art.’66 Two 16th century terracotta vases originally in the collection of the 17th century Venetian merchant, Marco Mantova Benavides,67 and donated by his grandson Antonio to the University of Padua in 1737 [fig.8], are direct copies of Campanian red-figure bell-kraters of the 4th century BC. However, the figures on them are drawn in the style of the Italian renaissance, with helmet, armour, swords, drapery and angel wings of the 15th/16th centuries. These are thought by the Maiolica specialist, Carola Fiocco,68 to have come from the 16th century Paduan artistic commune, and were probably made by the painter, antiquarian, and faker Gualtiero dell’Arzere. Irene Favaretto69 interprets the scenes thus:

In the 1st century Pliny had commented on the quality of the pottery from Arezzo by comparing it to Samian ware: ‘Samia etiam nunc in esculentis laudantur, retinent hanc nobilitatem et Arretium in Italia’.61 Piero della Francesca (c.1420-1492) was born and lived much of his life in the small town of Borgo San Sepolcro, the only large town nearby being Arezzo, where the pottery and kilns mentioned by Ristoro and Vasari were being found. There is strong evidence from details of his paintings that Piero must have seen and been impressed by Apulian red-figure vase-painting that he saw and copied it in his work. His fresco of the head and shoulders of an angel in the church of San Francesco, Arezzo [fig.4], shows features similar to those of female heads on Apulian redfigure volute-kraters of the second half of the 4th century, including a prominent head surrounded by an upward curving wing pattern, a wide neck, hair in the same style and length, and, particularly in the case of the White Saccos Painter, the busy added decoration of flowers sprouting around the head. Also a detail of Adam Announcing his Death c.1466, in the church of San Francesco, in which the standing naked youth is leaning with legs crossed and some of his weight taken by a staff held diagonally against the ground, is a back view variation of those common on the reverse of Campanian bell-kraters [fig.5]. Other similar comparisons can be made, 62 and Piero did not paint these pictures until the 1460s, at the very time he was in Arezzo and the ancient kilns and many red-figure sherds were being found.63 These examples do not match any single extant vase, but the general similarities to South Italian red-figure vases being found can be seen.

Pan represents the World “the machine of the universal world”, while Mars, in his renaissance armour seems to be linked, as support to Justice, to the figure on the other side of the vase. This imposing winged image which holds a sword and carries the scales seems to recall more the ‘Lase’ with the big open wings, which were frequently seen in Etruscan art, rather than the figure in the Italianate ceramic. According to renaissance symbolism, the sword held high signifies Justice, ‘Upright that does not sway’, to which Force, identified by Leo, submits by her feet.70 It can be seen from similar designs on Maiolica [fig.9] how South Italian red-figure styles were adapted in a less facsimilizing way from the early 16th century onwards. Vasari writes of the Maiolica maker, Battista Franco, whose work can be compared to ‘The antique ones made in Arezzo in ancient times.’71 A possible reference to Gnathian ware was made in 1558 by Mauro in his Antichità della Città di Roma, when he quotes the scholar Ulisse Aldrovandi72 who praised the garland painted vases of Cardinal Carpi.73

Vickers compares Antonio Pollaiuolo’s late 15th century frescoes in the Villa della Gallina at Arcetri with the dancing silenus on the tondo of an Attic red-figure cup in the Museo Archeologico at Ferrara, showing it to be a close copy.64 There are other rare insights such as Carpaccio’s painting The Vision of Saint Augustine, of 1502 (Scuola degli Schiavoni, Venice) [fig.6 and detail fig.7], in which a shelf in the background of St. Augustine’s study displays, among other bric-a-brac, what appear to be two Attic white-ground, black-figure vases circa 510-500 BC: a small stamnos, or possibly a squat oinochoe with the handle turned away; and what could be an upside down cup (the base at the top and the lip at the bottom, to make

 A third vase: a jug with a lid and the handle of an instrument protruding from it, may be a b-f chous. These items most likely came directly to Venice via its extensive shipping routes to the eastern Mediterranean, rather than being excavated in Italy, although the fishermen of Comacchio, near Spina (close to Venice) have been the source of illicit Attic vases for generations, and could have been so as early as Carpaccio’s day. However, a century later Venetian collections, particularly the great Vendramin collection, were mostly S.I. see Favaretto (1990). 66  Greenhalgh (1982) 18. Sparkes (1996) 44 illustrates a slightly later pen drawing of a cleric in his study by Lorenzo Lotto 1526-7, which shows a large lekythos or loutrophoros on a shelf in the background. 67   Catalogued by his son Andrea Mantova Benavides in Inventario delle Antichità di Casa Mantova Benavides (1695). 68   Fiocco (1991) 11. 69  Favaretto has produced the major research on the Benavides collection: (1972), (1984), and also published on early Italian collections and collectors (1982), (1990). 70   Favaretto (1984) 175. 71  Vasari (1881 ed.) 581. 72   The Bolognese naturalist who catalogued the statues of Rome as an appendix to Mauro’s Antichità. Aldrovandi referred to his own collection, the Pandechiodi Natura (which was open to any scholar or man of rank) as ‘The eighth wonder of the world’, Findlen (1989) 72. 73   Rodolfo Pio da Carpi (1500-1564) confidant of Pius III and member of the Holy Inquisition, formed a great library and a renowned collection 65

 Trans. (C. Dionisotti) from (1878 ed.) 557-8.   N.H. XXXV. xlvi. 160. 62   Greenhalgh (1982) 127, points out a strong resemblance to Greek figures (perhaps Theseus) in one of the panels of della Francesca’s Arezzo frescoes of two young prophets, standing in the typical pose of one hand holding the tip of the robe and the other extended, or on the hip. 63   Chastel (1959-60) 167, 171-4. 64  Vickers (1985-6) 157, pl. 4. See also Robertson (1976) 30. 60 61

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From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century

Figure 6 Carpaccio, ‘The Vision of Saint Augustine’

Figure 7 Carpaccio, ‘The Vision of Saint Augustine’ (Detail)

15

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 8 Two 16th century Italian terracotta vases in the red-figure style

Claire Lyons said: ‘Perhaps the first reference to figured pottery in a Northern European collection is in the 1609 inventory of the private museum of Antoine Agard, a master goldsmith of Arles.’74 This inventory was actually published in a catalogue of the collection in Paris in 1611: Discours et Roole des medailles et autres antiquitez…dans le cabinet de sieur Antoine Agard. B.J. Balsinger describes it as the presumed earliest known catalogue of a private collection, and cites Bonaffe, who said in his Dictionaire, that this is the first mention of a Greek vase in northern Europe: ‘in the cabinet was an ancient vase’:

faite à la morisque Indienne, y ayant tout autour dudit vase des figures avec facon de rabesque entre deux taillees en ladite terre, figures rousses, le fonds et tout le champ noir de la houteur de neuf poulces. 75 Although Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria (1528-1579) had a collection that might have been earlier, Agard’s catalogue was completed on 14 November 1609, and much of the collection was apparently formed in the preceding century. The earliest illustrated catalogue of Greek vases (which also includes other antiquities and curiosities) is a manuscript written, drawn and watercoloured by the Venetian antiquary Andrea Vendramin (1565-1629).76

of antiquities at the Palazzo Marzio in Rome which he opened to a select public, making it most likely that the vases were ancient. 74   Lyons (1992) 2.

  Balsinger (1970) 50.   De sacrificiorum, et triumphorum vasculis, Lucernisque Antiquorum,

75 76

16

From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century

Figure 9 Two 16th century Maiolica plates in the red-figure style

17

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Of particular interest is a sepia washed drawing of a wall covered in shelves on which are placed around one hundred and thirty vases of Greek shape.

introductory chapter on ‘Etruscan’ vase-painting. The two main sources for the vases illustrated were the Medici Museum, belonging to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the collection of Cardinal Gaultieri in Rome.

!6th century savants saw themselves, through their reading of Greek and Latin texts and by surrounding themselves with the newly discovered antiquities, as being the rightful heirs to the classical world.

Dempster’s treatise was perhaps the impetus for 18th century Etruscheria: Etruscomania.80 Stark said, ‘Dieses Werk ward der Ausgangspunkt Leidenshaftlichen Eifers und phantastischer Theorie über das hohe Alter und die Universalität etruskischer Kunst und Weisheit.’81 Dempster went to extremes in his hagiography of the Etruscans, believing them to be cousins of the Hebrews, even suggesting that Janus, the mythical first Etruscan king, was Noah’s grandson.82 He exaggerated Etruscan ingenuity, and suggested that they had anticipated the Greeks. Sandys quotes the antiquarian divine, James Ussher, as describing Dempster as, ‘A man of much reading, and absolutely no judgement.’83

Etruscheria: The Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Centuries The gods and urns of curious mould The above line is from ‘An Ode to the Earl of Hartford and the rest of the Members of the Society of British Antiquaries’, addressed to the Society on 19th January 1726 by Allan Ramsey77 (1686-1758). This poem gives a premonition of the atmosphere that was to prevail over the following decades: that enthusiasts, particularly the English (the Italians had their own regional political agendas), would almost rather these new discoveries kept their mystery than to bring them into the clear light of day.

De Etruria Regali is of interest in that it was not only the foundation stone of the eighteenth century enthusiasm for all things Etruscan, but also in the way that Buonarroti’s plates helped firmly establish the long-unchallenged misconception that South Italian black- and red-figured pottery was of Etruscan origin.

Little was written in the 17th century regarding ancient vases, and what mention there is is not sufficient to be sure it refers to figured vases. The best evidence comes from drawings of cabinets of curiosity such as the previously mentioned Vendramin Collection. Ancient vases were generally used to embellish eclectic groupings of antiquities, crown bookcases, or set off sculpture. As more black- and red-figure vases began to be found in the early 18th century, their origin became the focus of debate and nationalistic camps grew up, Florence being the most jingoistic with its insistence on an Etruscan origin, whilst Neapolitan savants preferred a local native manufacture, and later embraced the idea of Greek origin.

La Chausse In 1690, writing some 70 years after Dempster, but 33 years before his book was actually published, MichelAnge de La Chausse (1655-1724)84 published a catalogue of the antiquities in private collections in Rome entitled Romanum museum, sive Thesaurus eruditae antiquitatis in quo proponuntur. According to Brenda Breed, keeper of graphic arts at Harvard, this featured the first printed image of an existing Greek vase.85 However, there is a woodcut dated 1622 depicting the Museum of Francesco Calceolari in Venice (known to contain ancient vases), showing several Greek shaped vases [fig.10], and another of the Ferrante Imperato’s Museum Naples dated 1599, which may show a group of ancient vases in a cupboard [fig.11]. But with the simplicity of the woodcutting, one would be unlikely to be able to match a vase to the inventories of the collections.86 La Chausse’s vase is a copper plate engraving of an Attic black-figure pelike depicting Athena, Heracles and Hermes.87 For this vase to be apparently unbroken,

Dempster In the early 17th century the scholar Thomas Dempster was commissioned by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo de Medici, to write a treatise on Etruscan art. Dempster was a catholic Scot who had left protestant Britain for mainland Europe in the late 1500s, eventually becoming professor of Humanities at Bologna.78 Between 1616 and 1619 he compiled a seven volume treatise on ancient Etruria: De Etruria regali libri septem. However, this was not published until a century later in Florence in 1723 by Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, with the addition of 93 copper-plate engravings by the Florentine antiquarian Filippo Buonarroti. 36 of these plates are of vases, all purported to be Etruscan.79 Buonarroti also added an

  The origins of Etruscomania can be traced to the work of Antonio (or Annius) da Viterbo (1496), see Cook (1997) 277-78. 81   Stark (1880) 183. 82   He also states that Pythagoras was educated in Etruria, bk. III, p.343. 83   Sandys (1908) vol.II: 341. This was audacious from a man who calculated Creation to 23rd October 4004 BC. 84  La Chausse left his life as an administrateur in Paris and went to live in Rome, where he became part of the ‘nation Française de Rome’, the title given to a rich enclave of expatriot Frenchmen living there. In 1707 he became head of the French Academy in Rome. 85   Breed (1997) 8. 86   Favaretto (1990) fig. 20 illustrates a drawing (now in the Bodleian) of the early 17th century cabinet of Gabriel Vendramin in Venice, giving a better idea of the way vases were displayed. 87   Presumably now lost, this vase and La Chausse’s publication are not listed in ABV. 80

Urnis à liquoribus, lacrimis, atque vasculis Vitreis, in Andrea Vendrameno museo repositis, see Favaretto (1990) 143-51, pl. 20,21,22. 77   DNB. 78   Irving (1850) 340-70. 79  One illustration shows the great Attc volute-krater (now Arezzo Museo Civico 1465, ARV2 15.6) later identified as by Euphronios. A note says that it was assembled from fragments, the main picture being partly lost.

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From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century

Figure 10 Woodcut dated 1622 depicting the museum of Francesco Calceolari

Figure 11 Woodcut dated 1599 depicting the museum of Ferrante Imperato

19

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery the heading Vases Hetrusques estimez anciennement. He said:

and to be published in Rome, leaves very little doubt that it must have been found in Italy. La Chausse (naturally enough at this time before the publication of Dempster and with no other attributed vases to compare it with) assigned this pelike to the time of the Roman emperors.

Hetruscan vases of several kinds, and for various uses, were formerly so common in Italy, that we find plenty of them still. There are twelve in this Abbey.92 The cabinets of Italy are full of them. The art of making pottery ware and earthern vessels was found out first in Corinth, as Pliny tells us. Demaratus, a Corinthian, the father of Tarquin, brought it to Hetruria. They afterwards found out the way of colouring the earth they made these vessels of … Aretium, a town of Hetruria, now called Arezzo, was famous for the best makers of this ware.93

Between 1694 and 1699, Joannes Graevius published the twelve volume Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum, which included a presentation by La Chausse listing and describing items that were purported to have belonged to a Roman emperor.88 One of these items is a vase he described as: Praefericulum vas erat in sacrificiis praeferri solitum, in quo vinum, aliusve liquor includebatur. Hoc vas saepe occurrit in nummis Imperatorum, Caesarumque in eorum summi Pontifacatus memoriam signatum.89

The plates accompanying this were also more detailed, being fully filled in and shaded. Montfaucon deviated from the general path of scholarship by paying more attention to the shape and use of ancient vases than to their iconography. His plates show careful detail of shape, and illustrate volute kraters,94 column kraters, kalyx kraters, bell kraters, pelikai, hydriai, one more rhyton in the shape of a bull’s head, and an amphora, mostly from the collections of the cardinals Gualtieri95 and Quirini.

A copper engraving illustrating this vase (vol.v, tab.iii) shows a recognisable red-figure oinochoe (although the vase has been reproduced in the drawing style of the late 17th-early 18th century), with naked men cavorting on the upper body and a prancing goat on the lower part, the two separated by a plain band. Also in this volume is an illustration (tab.xxiv) of a phiale around the tondo of which winged figures drive chariots. Occasionally in these volumes, anonymous vases (mostly Greek shaped amphorae and kraters) are used as vignettes to decorate the edges of views and town plans.

Paradoxically, the drawings for Montfaucon’s plates have inaccurate and clumsily reproduced clothing on the figures, some resembling Roman togas.96 This is surprising considering Monfaucon’s great interest in ancient robes and his attempts to match garments on monumental sculpture to the names of garments mentioned by classical authors. He said:

In 1701 Lorenz Beger, the German antiquarian, published the third volume of Thesaurus Brandenburgicus which contained illustrations of three vases from the collection of Giovanni Bellori (1613-96).90 Beger did not attempt to categorise them, only listing them as antique vases, but they can now be identified as a South Italian red-figure krater; an Italo-Corinthian alabastron; and an Attic pelike.

We are equally at a Loss to find out the Shape of a great many Habits mentioned by Greek and Latin Authors, and to discover by what names they called other Habits which Monuments shew us.97

Montfaucon

Of course, it is possible that he had no control over the engravers employed by the publishers.

In 1719 the Benedictine monk, Bernard de Montfaucon (1655-1741), published L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures. This ten volume encyclopedia of antiquity included a number of outline plates of red-figure vases from the collections of Foucault, Bonanni and Beger, and seemingly the first illustration of a rhyton (vol. 3, i. pl. 60), This depicts the head of a goat with a doleful face and a fluted cup rim protruding from its head. He refers to it as, ‘Un ornement de tête extraordinaire: celui d’après est couronné de laurier, & tient d’une main un vaisseau qui a la forme d’une corne terminée par la tête d’un bouc.’91 In five large supplementary books, bound in 3 volumes published in 1724, he added a more detailed chapter on vases under

The Academy of Cortona On 29th December 1726 Onofrio Baldelli founded the Etruscan Academy of Cortona. The yearly president was given the ancient Etruscan title Lucumo. They met twice a month to discuss Etruscan art, and are still in existence today. The Academy published nine volumes between 1738 and 1795: Saggi di dissertazioni accademiche

  Montfaucon’s abbey: Religieux Bénédictin de la Congrégation de S. Maur. 93   Montfaucon (1724) vol. 2-3: 69. 94   Including one splendid (what appears to be) Apulian volute krater (suppl. Vol. III, pl.35). 95   Gualtieri had purchased the bulk of his vases from the huge vase collection of the Neapolitan lawyer, Joseph Valletta sold by his heirs in 1720. It became the first recorded vase collection in Rome, and passed into the Vatican (where Quirini had furnished a vase room) around 1744. 96   For early confusion over Greek and Roman dress see Vout (1996). 97   Montfaucon (1724) Suppl. III: 259. 92

 Graevius refers to them as ‘insignia of the Pontifex Maximus’, Graevius (1696) vol. v: 313. 89   Ibid. 90   A prominent Roman savant, biographer of Italian Baroque artists, Haskell (1993) 158-61. 91   Montfaucon (1719) vol. 3, I: 121. 88

20

From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century publicamente lette nella nobile Accademia etrusca dell’antichissima citta di Cortona.

Mastrilli’s belief that vases found at Nola had been made there was attacked by the Tuscan etruscophile, Padre Paolo Paciaudi (1710-1785), the Duke of Parma’s librarian, in his Skiadiophorema, sive de Umbellae Gestatione Commentarius, published in Rome in 1752, in which he refuted or ignored all the evidence put forward to disprove the Etruscan origin of vases.

In volume III, 1741, the academy published a bell-krater and a separate fragment which had both been found in an ancient theatre in the city of Hadria.98 These were illustrated in the article with copper plate engravings [fig.12]. The competent engravings show a South Italian red-figure bell-krater of the later fourth century, and a sherd with a depiction of a seated woman with a sceptre, also from a vase of the same date and origin. Yet these engravings are both entitled ‘Etruscan’ vases (frustum fictilis vasis Etrusci).

Mastrilli had no qualms about repainting vases that were damaged or had mundane scenes. He also had erotic scenes overpainted. Hamilton (who had bought a quantity of vases from the Mastrilli collection), referring to a vase belonging to Mastrilli, wrote: When the vase came into my possession, having purchased the whole collection, I soon perceived, that the drapery on the Silenus had been added with a pen and Ink, as was the case on the figures of many other vases in the same Collection, the late possessor being devout having caused all the nudities to be cover’d; However soon as the Vase was mine, a spunge washed off at once the modern drapery, and Passeri’s dissertation.102

The general consensus among Italian scholars (no substantial debate had so far been published in northern Europe), particularly in Florence and Rome, was that these vases were being found in Italy and were therefore indigenous to Italy, and if they resembled what little ancient Greek art there was available for comparison, this showed that the Etruscans could have influenced the Greeks. The Mastrilli Collection99 By the mid-18th century the Neopolitan savant, the Marchese Felice Maria Mastrilli (c.1694-1755?) had built up a collection of nearly 400 vases, housed in the museum at his residence in Naples, the Palazzo di San Nicandro. Many of the vases had been found on his various properties, and some he had excavated himself. This museum was open to scholars and Mastrilli had a long and wide correspondence including Gori, Passeri, Paoli, de Caylus and Winckelmann. Mastrilli’s vases have had an interesting history: the collection was sold off by his executors in 1766, and many of them passed through the Hamilton collection and ended up in the British Museum. Others, after being illustrated in de Caylus and Passeri, found permanent homes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Cabinet des Médailles, Paris.

Winckelmann also praised the Mastrilli Collection:

Mastrilli was one of the collectors and savants native to Southern Italy, such as Martolli, Mazzocchi, di Blasi and Paoli, who were keen to challenge their Tuscan counterparts’ insistence on Etruscan origins for South Italian wares.100 They recognised the significance of Greek inscriptions on pottery excavated in Southern Italy. In 1745 P.S. Paoli commented:

Between 1737 and 1743, the Tuscan antiquarian Antonio Francesco Gori (1691-1757) published three volumes on Etruscan antiquities: Museum etruscum, exhibens insignia veterum Etruscorum monumenta aereis tabulis. He included Attic and South Italian vases,105 claiming them all for the Etruscans. He claimed that Homer had got the ideas for his epics from the scenes on Etruscan vases. Sixty years later Luigi Lanzi said:

Not inferior [to the Valletta Collection], at least in size, is the collection made by the Count Mastrilli, of Naples. It was enlarged, a few years ago, by a considerable number which had been collected by another member of the same family residing at Nola. Both collections, united together, are now in possession of their heir, the Count Palma, of Naples.103 An interesting breakdown by Claire Lyons of the Mastrilli collection shows that 36% of the vases were Attic (mostly red-figure) and 57% were South Italian.104 Gori

Quae etruscae vocant, quaeque potiori fortasse ratione Campania decerentur…in eis, non rare literae graecae, rarius etruschae apparent.101

Il Gori arrivò a immaginarsi che Omero vedesse cò suoi occhj queste urne Sepolcrali (Mus. Etr. II: 226). Si pretende (dal Gori) che Omero osservasse tutti I simulacri e la pitture (la pitture non era nata) di cotesti popoli, e che dipoi le convertisse I quelle favole ch’

  Modern Atri, a Roman colony from 290 BC, and the terminus of the Via Caecilia. 99   See Lyons (1992) 1-26. 100   From early times some Neapolitan scholars had sought an Athenian parentage for Naples: Lyons (1997) 230 cites Ambrogio Leone’s De Nola of 1514. 101   Paoli (1745) 24. 98

  Tischbein (1791) I: 10-11. Passeri (see infra p.42) had written a ‘learned’ piece on why a Silenus was represented fully clothed. 103  Winckelmann (1881) 263. 104   33% Apulian & 24% Campanian. The remaining 7% cannot be determined, Lyons (1992) 13. 105  And one modern fake, according to Cook (1997) 277. 102

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 12 Red-figure vases illustrated by the Academy of Cortona, 1741 22

From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century empirono di romore il mondo e se ad Omero diedero motivo di tessere I suoi romanzi; ora noi buoni uomini le dovremo credere tutte favole greche, e trojane avventure; e lasciarci guidare dalle particolari opinioni?106

The Comte de Caylus112 (1692-1765) was an aristocratic French soldier and traveller in the Levant and Italy who became an early classical archaeologist and hoarder of antiquities. He eventually gave his collection, which included a large amount of vases (the majority South Italian) to the King of France, and these can still be seen in the Cabinet des Antiques in the Bibliothèque Nationale. His knowledge became so widely praised that he was elected to the Académie de Peinture et Sculpture, and an honorary member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, and was later regarded as the French counterpart of Winckelmann. He published his whole collection between 1752 and 1767, entitled Recueil d’Antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, romaines et gauloises, in seven volumes, creating all the drawings, and engraving all the plates himself.

However, Gori corresponded on a huge scale with the other collectors and savants of his day from 1722 until his death in 1757107 and this has made it possible to have a close insight into who was who in continental vase collecting and scholarship, where many important vases were first acquired, and the existence of interesting vases that have now disappeared.108 In 1751, Giuseppe Maria Pancrazi, a Neapolitan antiquary strongly opposed to the Tuscan savant’s insistence on Etruscan origins for all black- and red-figure vases found in Italy, published Antichità Siciliàne, showing that identical red-figure vases were being found in Sicily. Jacques d’Orville (1696-1751)109 wrote about the finding of quantities of black- and red-figure pottery on the sites of Greek colonies in Sicily in his Sicula, quibus Siciliae veteris rudera (posthumously published in 1764). Gori had to agree that Sicily had never been Etruscan and the vases found in Sicily must have been made by Sicilian Greeks, thereby supposing similar vases found on the mainland were also colonial Greek.

Although French, and having no Tuscan affiliations, de Caylus stubbornly refused to concede Greek origins and went ahead with publishing his pro-Etruscan stance giving a prominent place to Etruscan art. However, he did show some caution in deciding on origins of works of art, saying there were not sufficient pieces for comparison. But his work shows just how little was known about the ancient art that was now being found in great quantity. Plate xxxi, in vol.1 of ‘Recueil’ illustrates a bronze, found in Etruria, of a Hindu dancing girl typical of those seen all over India. de Caylus said of this bronze:

Gori had a huge influence on the thinking of 18th century antiquarians, and it took a long time to break down his Etruscan exaggerations. Winckelmann wrote in 1764 (some years after Gori’s death):

Mais J’avouerai que le hazard m’ ayant mis sous les yeux une quantité considérable de figures du Japon … J’en avertis ici, afin que ceux qui s’appliquent à l’étude de l’Antiquité, ne s’accoutument point à décider avant que d’avoir fait toutes les recherches possibles.113

The opinion of Gori [on the differences between Greek and Etruscan] is absolutely of no weight since he was never out of Florence and consequently has no personal knowledge of that larger portion of antiquities…which exists outside his native city.110

That a scholar should be so uninformed about the differences in two such diverse forms of regional art, and to mistake a piece from a newly and widely opened up country like India (where the French had colonies) and think it was Japanese (a country that was totally unfamiliar and closed to the West), shows the infancy of art connoisseurship in the early to mid 18th century.

Eduardo Corsini, a professor at the Academy of Pisa, was one of the very earliest (but later ignored) scholars to insist on the inclusion of mainland Greece when studying Magna Graecia. In 1744 he published at Florence Fasti Attici in quibus Archontum Atheniensium…Novisque observationibus illustrantur. He expounded his belief that Etruria and Southern Italy were under Greek control and that the artifacts found there were of Greek manufacture.

However, de Caylus’ Egyptian plates show accurately drawn hieroglyphs which could not be deciphered then, but can now be read from his plates. This accuracy was not shown on some of his plates of vases which are drawn from actual vases but with a definite eighteenth century flavour, e.g. plate XLIII [fig.13]. He places all the illustrations of vases in the Etruscan section, except for an owl skyphos, which he places in among the Greek sculpture and intaglios. Even this he refers to as having been made in Etruria for the Athenian market. He points out that the Phrygian caps worn by the protomes on a lebes gamikos, plate XXXVI [fig.14], suggest an Asian origin,

De Caylus Ci-gist un antiquaire acariâtre et brusque Ah! Q’il est bien loge dans cette cruche étrusque111   Lanzi (1806) 61.   A correspondence of nearly 500 letters survives and is now kept in theBiblioteca Marucelliana in Florence and has been indexed by Liuba Giuliani, see Gori (1987). 108   A good example is the dispersed collection of Giovanni Battista Carafa, Duke of Nola, see Lyons (2002) 195-201. 109   Professor of History and Greek at Leyden 1730-42. 110  Winckelmann (1881) 261. 111   De Caylus designed his tomb as a classical vase, and this wry epitaph 106 107

is believed to be by Diderot, his young rival at the French Academy. Diderot also said, ‘Death has delivered us from this most malicious of connoisseurs.’ Cochin (1715-90) Mémoires (1880) 53. 112   DBF. Eriksen (1974) 160-3. 113   De Caylus (1752-67) vol.1: 94-5.

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 13 de Caylus’ Recueil showing ancient vases drawn in the 18th century style

24

From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century

Figure 14 de Caylus’ Recueil showing Phrygian caps on a vase

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery possibly harking back to Troy (insinuating an Etruscan origin through the foundation of Aeneas).

James Byres was, like Dempster a century before, a catholic Scot who left Scotland to live in Italy after the Jacobite Revolt. He was a failed painter, but a successful dealer in antiquities with showrooms in Rome. He escorted grand-tourists around the ancient sites contemporarily with Winckelmann and had accompanied Winckelmann when he escorted William Hamilton and his first wife around the sights of Rome in 1768. His great coup was purchasing the ‘Portland Vase’ from the Princess of Palestrina, Donna Cornelia Barberina Colonna (who was embarrassed by gambling debts) and selling it to Hamilton in 1782. He studied under Mengs for 5 years in the 1750s, but made his living by obtaining vases and other antiquities for clients he met through Mengs. Gavin Hamilton (no relation to Sir William) was the leading British art agent in Rome at the time, and was obtaining much more substantial pieces for wealthy English grand-tourists. Piranesi was also an intimate member of their group, and they had much influence on the young Luigi Lanzi.

The phenomenon of national pride taking precedence over historical accuracy which was seen to blight Italian scholarship is followed here by the Frenchman de Caylus, who adds a section on Gaulish art illustrated by obvious Roman artifacts. De Caylus may have been influenced in his Etruscan stance by Paciaudi, who was one of the earliest scholars to look for connections with Greek authors. Paciaudi corresponded with de Caylus over many years, and acquired many of the vases for de Caylus’ collection, as described in their letters, which were gathered together and published by the Parisian savant Antoine Sérieys in 1802.114 Winckelmann criticised de Caylus for claiming that all ancient painted pottery was Etruscan. In 1758 he wrote to Giovanni Bianconi in Bologna, ‘Ha sposato un errore commune ed e di pigliare tutti vasi di terracotta e dipinti per Etruschi.’115 However, Ferdinando Bologna, writing of the impact on the 18th century of newly discovered antiquities, gives de Caylus a pre-eminent place:

Piranesi Giambattista Piranesi (1720-1778), the great Roman architectural engraver, published Della magnificenza ed architettura dei Romani in 1761, attributing the greatest influence on Roman art to the Etruscans. In 1769 he wrote:

Returning to the crucial years in the middle of the eighteenth century, the picture is completed including the methodological and scientific contributions of the Count of Caylus, the first person in Europe interested in the history of ancient art organized according to reliable general guidelines (the specific tastes of each nation; the relationships between these nations according to trade exchanges; the examination of the works according to the experimental knowledge of their technical and artistic composition), … In this context, it is surprising to find that, in the first volume and then again in the third, the recueil took so much notice of the objects discovered.116

The prejudices, by which the antiquarians have let themselves be guided, and among them Caylus himself, have taken from the Tuscans to give to the Greeks all the vases of which the design is perfect. But I wish that those who think so would tell me why none of these vases were ever found in Greece but all of them in Hetruria, and in the Campagnia. This sufficiently demonstrates that the art of making and painting them was Hetruscan and Italian. But if any one by chance should have been found in Greece, we ought to suppose it to have been brought out of Tuscany. But granting that it was wrought by a Grecian Artist, it cannot be denied, after what we have said, that such vases are of Tuscan invention, imitated and copied by the Grecian artist from the Tuscan manner.119

In the 1750s, an extraordinary community of expatriate artists, antiquities collectors and dealers, and tour guides formed in close proximity to each other in Rome. Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) was a German artist, antiquarian and long-term resident of Rome who specialised in painting for British grand-tourists.117 He had assembled a collection of 300 vases (mostly from Nola) by 1759. This was such a fine collection that even de Caylus was jealous of it: he wrote to Paciaudi in 1761, ‘We must console ourselves over Mengs’ vases, one cannot have everything, but they are painted with more facility than his own works’.118

Other writers denied all originality to the Etruscans. PierreJean Mariette120 had publicly declared that all Etruscan art was copied from the Greeks. Piranesi for his part published Della introduzione e del progresso delle Belle Arti in Europa nei tempi antichi in 1765, illustrated with large copper etchings showing newly discovered Etruscan tombs at Tarquinia and Chiusi to refute Mariette’s claim. Piranesi’s published letters show that there was bad blood between him and Mariette.121

  Sérieys (1802).   Briefe (1952) i. For Winckelmann see infra p.54. 116   Bologna (1992) 89. 117   Winckelmann dedicated his Geschichte der kunst des Alterthums to Mengs in 1764, and Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), a German-Swiss who became an eminent artist in England, translated Winckelmann’s Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks into English in 1765, and made a prolonged sojourn to Rome from 1770, incorporating tableaux from S.I. vasepaintings into his pictures. 118   Nisard (1877) i. 228. 114

Piranesi trained as an architect, but became an artist and engraver by trade, and was not a scholar.122 In 1779,

115

  Piranesi (1769) 18.  The famous connoisseur and dealer, collaborator with Pierre Crozat & the Duc d’Orléan in producing the first art book: Recueil Crozat, 1729. 121   Un-numbered letters of Mariette published in Piranesi (1765). 122   For Piranesi see Bianconi (1779), Hind (1922), Wilton-Ely (1978) & 119

120

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From Ancient Rediscovery to the Early Eighteenth Century Piranesi’s first biographer, G.L. Bianconi, called Piranesi ‘the unlettered publisher of the writings of others’.123 His arguments were not discussed in the dissertations of contemporary writers on vases. However, it can be seen from his draughtsmanship and attention to detail in his prints that he probably had a much better eye for the detail of style in the artifacts themselves than most scholars. Although he had been apprenticed to a workshop rather than going to an academic institution, he became rich from his famous prints and was in a position to publish his views in the folios that held them. It is understandable that, seeing so many artifacts disinterred in Italy, and knowing nothing of the later finds in the Kerameikos, he should assume these works to be indigenous. The almost lawcourtstyle battle over an Etruscan origin for red-figure vases124 led scholars to seek evidence that would prove their case, rather than seek the truth and look for any chronological pattern of development.

visiting Italy would have been given the false idea that fine antiquities littered the ground and were there for the taking. The truth was that dealing in antiquities was a thriving and competitive business. Volumes two and three of Passeri’s work followed in 1770 and 1775, with 300 plates of vases taken from forty collections, illustrating figured vases, many of which appear to be South Italian,128 but Passeri lists them all as Etruscan (although he knew that many of the vases in Florentine collections were originally from Naples129). He expounded his views on the Etruscan origins of black- and red-figure vases in Della Pittura degli Etrusci Dissertazione (1755), and in his 1767 review of, and supplement to, Dempster: In Thomæ Dempsteri Libros de Regali Paralipomena. This academic battle was waged in Florence and Rome while the majority of actual discoveries were going on further south in the vicinity of Naples. Two distinct ancient cultures were being discovered simultaneously: first century AD Roman Herculaneum, and fifth to third century BC Etruscan, Greek settler, Samnite and Daunian tombs. Artifacts from these disparate sources were displayed together in the eclectic Cabinets of Curiosities of the rich collectors of the time. The carrying off of artifacts without recording their location, the splitting of vase groups found together in one tomb and the practice of smashing all unpainted or inferior quality vases,130 plus the pressure to put the desired provenance on finds, all put back the cause of scholarship.

Passeri Giam-Battista Passeri (1694-1780) was a dedicated etruscophile and, although an enthusiastic and erudite antiquarian, was not only gullible,125 but had set ideas about Etruscan origins for all black- and red-figure vases found in Italy, stubbornly refusing to accept the evidence put to him proving Greek origins. He published the first volume of Picturae Etruscorum Vasculis in 1767, the same year as Hamilton’s first collection. The contrast in quality is marked and the impact of Hamilton’s superb plates must have overshadowed Passeri’s pedestrian copper-plate lineengravings. Lissarrague and Reed state, ‘It seems clear Hamilton and d’Hancarville are deliberately setting up in competition with Passeri’s publication, which they criticize and so diminish.’126 This was in contrast to d’Hancarville’s admiration for de Caylus, to whom he made a dedication in volume III of AEGR. Also, d’Hancarville’s text in the Hamilton volumes was exploring Greek roots for vasepainting, while Passeri was still insisting on Etruscan origins. The frontispiece to his first volume is a fantastic scene showing a gentleman watching a man digging in a classical rotunda with niches containing amphorae and statues. They have just dug out a figured vase, a relief sculpture and a huge painted panel, while three gigantic figured vases (one as big as a man) stand or lie by the hole.127 Any grand-tourist seeing these pictures before

Some eighty years later this destruction was still going on apace: George Dennis, the English traveller, antiquarian and amateur archaeologist, gave his own dramatic account of a first-hand experience on his travels in Etruria: At the mouth of the pit in which they were at work sat the capo, his gun by his side, as an in terrorem hint to his men to keep their hands from picking and stealing. We found them on the point of opening a tomb. The roof, as is frequently the case in this light, friable tufo, had fallen in, and the tomb was filled with earth, out of which the articles it contained had to be dug in detail. This is generally a process requiring great care and tenderness, little of which, however, was here used, for it was seen by the first objects brought to light that nothing of value was to be expected. Coarse pottery of unfigured, unvarnished ware, and a variety of small vases in black clay, were its only produce; and as they drew them forth, the labourers crushed them beneath their feet as things “cheaper than seaweed.”

(1994). 123   Bianconi (1779) 34. 124   Lyons (1997) 230 said: ‘From the 16th century, a growing recognition of their Greek origins positioned South Italian cities in opposition to the ideological hegemony of ‘romanitas’ privileged by the Renaissance and the Etruscan descent claimed by the Medici in Florence’. 125   He was sold large quantities of unusual Roman lamps by ‘excavators’ and published them in three volumes full of engravings: Lucernae Fictiles Musei Passerii (1739-51). Unfortunately the majority were later exposed as fakes made specifically to fool him. 126   Lissarrague & Reed (1997) 284. 127   The frontispieces to volumes II & III are similarly imaginary, one showing an artist drawing a stele with a huge r-f amphora standing on top, and an Egyptian mummy protruding from the ground. The other shows a gentleman traveller admiring a colonnade while a highly decorated r-f amphora lies abandoned in the grass.

  The plates are too basic to make accurate identifications possible, but they show S.I. iconography such as a figure in a naiskos, Phlyakes, seated women, youths leaning on staffs, female heads, men with feet on rocks, and figures standing in the sky. 129  Winckelmann (1881 ed.) i: 381. 130   The criteria used to determine inferiority seems to have been saleability, and the destruction of the less saleable vases was thought to increase the rarity of the remainder. The tomb context of artifacts was not even a concept at this period. 128

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery In vain we pleaded to save some from destruction; they were “foolish stuff” - the capo was Inexorable; his orders were to destroy immediately whatever was of no pecuniary value, And he could not allow us to carry away one of these relics which he so despised. It is lamentable that excavations should be carried on in such a spirit; with the sole view of Gain, and with no regard to the advancement of science…. The man to whom the princess had intrusted the superintendence of her scavi was “a lewd Fellow of the baser sort,” without education or antiquarian knowledge, though experienced In determining the localities of tombs, and the pecuniary value of their contents.131 Also Hoffmann, referring to the prince de Canino, said: ‘The market was a closely controlled one; and when it appeared as though it might be flooded, Bonaparte gave orders that the less important pieces unearthed be smashed in order that the quality (meaning the prices) be maintained’.132 Much of the evidence was lost by the intensive excavation for treasure, making it take much longer to form a clear method of differentiation between Greek and Etruscan. In England etruscheria took centre stage, not from national pride as in Italy, but from fashion. Greece not being easily accessible to those on the grand tour, most antiquities brought back to Britain were from Italy, giving them a preeminence over the yet largely undiscovered splendours of Greece. And as black- and red-figure vases were demonstrably not Roman, they must be Etruscan.

  Dennis (1848) 450.   Hoffmann (1979) 62.

131 132

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Chapter II The second half of the 18th century, The Golden Age of Hamilton, d’Hancarville, Winckelmann, and Wedgwood; Collecting, Publishing, and the Reception of Red-Figure Vases in Art and Design This chapter will look at how a golden age of collecting and publishing of vases was created by the growth of interest in classical archaeology in Italy in the second half of the 18th century, brought about by the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the opening of many tombs around Naples and Etruria. It will look at how these events, combined with the Grand Tour and the expatriot British, German and French communities in Rome and Naples affected many aspects of social life back in England including the use of vase-painting motifs for the design of interiors and everyday objects from furniture to wall-coverings, crockery and clothing. Central to an understanding of this reception of vases was the publication of Hamilton’s vase collection and its subsequent display in the British Museum, which was one of the main progenitors of the serious study and exploration of the true origins of figured vases. Names that have remained synonymous with vase study flourished in mid- to late-18th century Italy include Hamilton; Winckelmann; d’Hancarville; Saint-Non; Denon and later Lanzi and their counterpart in England, Josiah Wedgwood.

Late-18th century English caricaturists also made play with Greek vase images: James Gillray (1756-1815) produced a cartoon of Hamilton in 1801 entitled From Sir William Hamilton’s Collection, showing him standing as one of his vases, his wig and epaulettes forming the shape of a hydria [fig.16]. Another cartoon of Hamilton by Gillray, A Cognoscenti contemplating ye Beauties of ye Antique, also of 1801, [fig.17] shows Hamilton surveying his treasures in what seems to be an auction sale-room. There are allusions in many of the pieces on display: a bust of Lais, the ancient Greek courtesan, has the face of Lady Hamilton; in the background a painting of Cleopatra is also of Emma, whilst a picture entitled Antony is obviously Nelson; a painting of Vesuvius erupting has sexual connotations;1 next, a painting marked Claudius is almost certainly Hamilton himself. This caricature was published just before the sale of Hamilton’s second vase collection at Christie’s in London. It gives some indication of the interest that was aroused in London society by Hamilton and his antiquities collection, that Gillray (the most eminent caricaturist of the day, who concentrated many of his cruel cartoons on the mad King George and his profligate son, the Prince Regent) should devote two caricatures to Hamilton and his vases within months. Gillray’s contemporary Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) was less of a political caricaturist, preferring to satirise London and Oxbridge social life. He produced many cartoons of academics and antiquarians, including an undated (c.1797) pornographic engraving entitled The Model, which shows a connoisseur surrounded by his collection of antiquities, performing a sexual act with an artist’s model similar to scenes seen on a huge classical urn in the background.

It is in this period that a new form of art can be claimed to derive direct inspiration from vase-painting. The art of finely cutting black paper into delicate and realistic outline portraits and conversation pieces was named after Etienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), the French Minister of Finance. It was his hobby to cut profiles. This pastime art form also became popular in England with its own exponents such as the artist John Miers (1758-1821). Silhouettes were framed and hung, made into miniature jewellery, lockets and keepsakes, pasted into scrap-books and onto firescreens. The fact that this pastime reached the height of its fashion in England, as well as France, in the 1770s and 80s at the very time that black- as well as red-figure pottery was becoming all the rage in high society (mainly due to Hamilton’s volumes) is more than a coincidence. A closer inspection of silhouettes shows remarkable similarities in layout, iconography (ladies sitting in Greek chairs wearing chiton-style dresses, with Greek hairstyles and even sakkoi, attended by erotes) and incising techniques to emphasise features and linen folds, shows that this fashion must surely have been directly influenced by the illustrated books (probably rather than the actual vases) of ‘Etruscan’ vases appearing at the time [fig.15].

Vases versus ancient sculpture and ancient architecture in the 18th century Since the great finds of sculpture in Rome in the early 16th century and the collections of Julius II (Pope from 150313) at the Belvedere Court, and the Borghese and Farnese families, sculpture had been more prized and sought after than vases. Books of engravings of famous collections of sculpture were published much earlier than those on vases.2   Such innuendoes were common in the work of cartoonists of the time.   E.g. Italian engravers such as Nicoletto da Modena and Marcello Fogolino produced single sheet prints after free-standing classical sculptures in the 1500s. Antoine Lafréry published a book of engravings 1 2

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 15 18th century silhouette showing the influence of figured vase-painting

Figure 16 James Gillray, ‘From Sir William Hamilton’s Private Collection’

Figure 17 James Gillray, ‘A Cognoscenti contemplating ye Beauties of ye Antique

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The second half of the 18th century Also the size and prohibitive weight, and the scarcity of sculpture put it in a much higher price range than vases, and few could afford to buy and ship good sculpture out of Italy and, later, Greece,3 whereas anyone who could afford to travel could afford to own a vase. The poet Goethe commented in his diary whilst at Naples in 1787 ‘there is not a traveller who would not like to own one [‘Etruscan’ vase], and I fear I shall eventually be seduced myself.4 In large collections vases and sculpture were integrated, vases being considered an aid to setting off sculpture, but little has been published engaging with the relationship between vases and sculpture. For example, neither Piranesi or Winckelmann have been discussed in the context of vases: Alex Potts’ Flesh and the Ideal, Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (1994), does not mention William Hamilton or his collection, and refers only once in passing to Greek vases, thus ignoring an important aspect of Winckelmannian scholarship. Similarly, both of John Wilton-Ely’s major works on Piranesi5 fail to acknowledge Piranesi’s writings on the Etruscan origin of figured vases found in Italy.

applied for the post of ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1764, partly because of his wife’s delicate health and her need for warmth and dry air. Catherine was a social success in Naples and her soirées helped Hamilton to become very popular at the Neapolitan Court, thus allowing entry to private collections and influence in obtaining permits to dig.10 Hamilton’s close school friend, the eccentric Frederick Hervey (1730-1803), later Bishop of Derry and Earl of Bristol, was one of the key English collectors of ancient vases and sculpture of the mid-18th century, making several trips to Naples.11 There can be little doubt therefore that his influence prompted Hamilton to start collecting antiquities when he was posted to Naples. One of Hamilton’s earliest purchases, and the foundation of his collection, were sixtyfive vases offered by the estate of Mastrilli, followed later by select vases from the collection of Giovanni-Battista Carafa, Duke of Nola (1715-1768). The results of Hamilton’s voracious collecting of vases were published in a set of four sumptuous folio-sized volumes between 1767 and 1776.12 However, to refer to these as a catalogue of his collection is a misnomer because, as Lyons points out, of the 41 vases from the Mastrilli collection owned by Hamilton, only 16 were published in AEGR.13 Vases from other collections, never owned by Hamilton, were also used, including those from the Vatican, the King of France, Prince Biscari, the Comte Peralta, de Caylus and Mengs. Many of the vases illustrated in AEGR had already been illustrated in Dempster, Montfaucon and Passeri.14

The accuracy of measurement of antiquities was taken far more seriously in the study of ancient architecture than pottery in the 18th century. James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, who recorded the stones of Athens in the early 1760s, made measurements to a tiny fraction of an inch,6 whereas, if vases were measured at all, it would be the height of a vase to the nearest inch and no other proportions. Sculpture is the present and past focus of scholarship, taking precedence over vases. Hamilton

The man who was to have so much influence over the cataloguing and publication of Hamilton’s first vase collection was the self-styled ‘Baron d’Hancarville’, who convinced Hamilton to give him the task of overseeing the engraving of the plates, and writing the accompanying text. D’Hancarville was the pseudonym of Pierre François Hugues (1719-1805), the son of a French cloth merchant,

I don’t despair of making him an Antiquarian for he manages a magnifying glass very [well] and will look at a Cameo or an intaglio very gravely through it’ –Hamilton in 1780 relating how he taught his pet monkey Jack to ridicule pompous connoisseurs.7 William Hamilton,8 son of Sir Archibald Hamilton, Governor of Jamaica, and grandson of the 3rd Duke of Hamilton, was born in 1730.9 His mother was mistress to the Prince of Wales, giving young William connections at court. He went to Westminster School and then into the guards in 1747, where he saw action in Flanders. Preferring cultural pursuits to the army, he became an MP and married the heiress Catherine Barlow in 1758. He

  Emma Hart (1765-1815) became the second Lady Hamilton in 1791. She did not play such a major role in Hamilton’s career, but her notoriety meant that Hamilton’s activities were often written about, thus giving greater insight into the antiquities displayed in his house and used in tableaux at his soirees. 11   DNB Hervey was arrested by the French in Italy in 1798, and a hoard of antiquities he was shipping to England were seized. He died in Albano two months after Hamilton. 12   500 copies were printed at an eventual cost of £6,000, a huge sum. Volume I bears the date 1766 on the two title pages: red-figure for the English, and black-figure for the French. The volume II title pages are also r-f and b-f, and are dated 1767. This date was left on the 3rd and 4th volumes, although they did not finally appear for another ten years (partly due to the machinations of d’Hancarville) in 1776. Griener (1992) 81-2 claims that d’Hancarville purposely back-dated the volumes to conceal the fact that he had plagiarised the theories on ancient sculpture published by Octavian Guasco in 1768. Lissarrague & Reed (1997) 275 state: ‘It is the first colour-plate book on art history published in a standard edition of several hundred copies’. 13  Lyons (1992) 10, n.62. She states: ‘While most of the Attic vases can be traced to their current locations, the majority of the South Italian pieces once owned by Mastrilli have proven difficult to identify’. 14   Lissarrague & Reed (1997) 290-1 list vases that have been traced to their location at the time they were illustrated in Hamilton. 10

of ancient sculpture; Speculum Romanum Magnificentiae, in 1562. 3   Even the influential and moderately wealthy Hamilton did not own any prize pieces of sculpture, although he dealt extensively in casts. 4   Goethe (1816) 104. 5  Wilton-Ely (1978) & (1994). 6   E.g. the space from the top of the Cymatium to the bottom of its moulding on the Temple of the Winds measuring 8 feet, 4 35/100 inch, Stuart & Revett (1762) i. 25. 7   William Hamilton, Letter to his friend Lord Henry Herbert. Herbert (1950) vol.I: 294. 8  DNB, Fothergill (1969), Ramage (1990), Jenkins & Sloane (1996). Burn (1997), Constantine (2001). 9   A propitious year for British neo-classicism as it also saw the birth of Josiah Wedgwood and his partner Thomas Bentley.

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery who also used the titles Marquis de Lenoncourt and Baron du Han. He was the most colourful character in 18th century vase-scholarship: child prodigy; fluent in the major European languages (plus Latin and Greek); a friend of Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire and Winckelmann; colleague of Hamilton, Townley and Payne Knight, all of whom he robbed and swindled. He not only ran off with the Duke of Wurtenberg’s silver, but also with the copper plates for Hamilton’s vase volumes. Hamilton described how he chased d’Hancarville in a letter to Wedgwood of 2nd March 1773.15 Winckelmann wrote to his nephew, Muzel-Stosch on 5 September 1759 ‘when you show d’Hancarville your gems, watch what he is doing with his hands’.16 He was also a pornographer17 and serial bankrupt. Sir Horace Mann wrote, ‘D’Hancarville was a strange man … that only wanted common honesty to make a brilliant figure.18 Modern scholarship has been less patient with d’Hancarville than with other 18th century vase eccentrics: Momigliano said, ‘D’Hancarville stupéfiait les plus habiles que lui par son obstination à ne rien comprendre aux vases’19. Wedgwood thought on similar lines: in an unpublished letter to Hamilton he wrote, ‘D’Hancarville’s long and labor’d disquisition, in which I mean to leave out what appears to me illiberal and little to the purpose’20.

Unpublished letters and accounts in the British Library show that he was making large sums of money from Hamilton during the years 1767 and 1768.22 Besides the illustrations of vases, volume II contains the first ever accurate depiction of the newly opened interior of a South Italian tomb showing the vases in position.23 [fig.18a&18b] Hamilton had the tomb at Trebbia near Capua opened and drew the scene himself. Hamilton’s drawing of 1766 was used by Giuseppe Bracci to produce a completed drawing, which was then engraved by Carlo Nolli for publication. Hamilton’s vase plates, along with Wedgwood’s pottery, were the catalyst for the continued popularity of Greek vases above all other types of antiquity, except sculpture (which is scarce, difficult to transport and largely unobtainable), for the following two centuries.24 The publication of Hamilton’s vase collection made such a big impact that it changed the fashion for vase collecting. The vast majority of the most decorative vases found were South Italian and made up a great deal of those so far illustrated. This made them popular, collectable and fashionable. The largely South Italian basis of the red-figure vases in Hamilton’s first collection meant that the fast growing fashion for Greek vases and their designs, outside of the close-knit circles of the savants, was largely based on vases made by Greek settlers which were displayed in the illustrations of his collection, rather than the Attic wares which were to take over in popularity at a later date.25 I would suggest that it is fair to assume that more people (certainly in northern Europe) saw the plates of the vases in Hamilton’s volumes than had seen actual vases, until the first public exhibition of Greek vases (the core of which were from Hamilton’s collection) at the British Museum in 1772.26 South Italian vases had not only gained prominence by being discovered in large numbers centuries before Attic, but now their designs were being proliferated to a much wider audience, and formed the foundations of the public’s perception of Greek vases.

D’Hancarville had his own agenda, and used the publication of Hamilton’s vases to write his own magnum opus. He included vases from other collections and even different works of art21 in his attempt to write the ultimate treatise on ancient art. He made long deviations from vases to air his ideas on the history of ancient art, often quoting from ancient sources. The introduction to volume II ‘Preliminary Discourse upon Painting’ is the only place in the four volumes where d’Hancarville writes specifically about vase-painting without much deviation. Anything he could not understand in a vase-painting he would claim depicted a mystery religion. His escapes from the results of his spendthriftery, and his prolix writing, meant that the publication of Hamilton’s volumes was held up for years.   Morrison (1893) 19.   Briefe (1954) ii: 30-31. 17   In 1770 he was expelled from Naples on ‘Pain of death if he ever returned’ (letters from Thomas Jenkins to Townley of 1770, in the Townley Archive at Preston, (quoted in Haskell (1984) 183) for publishing Monumens du Culte Secret des Dames Romaines and Veneres uti observantur in gemmis antiquis. The pornographic gems he used were all faked to prove and illustrate his strange predilections. D’Hancarville’s inclusion in AEGR of an illustration of an erotic tondo on a cup not actually in Hamilton’s collection (volume IV plate 123) and never traced (if it ever existed), shows a naked girl astride a supine naked man. The whole tableau, including the hair, musculature and features of the man, and position of the bodies, is more reminiscent of the Pompeiian wallpaintings just being discovered, than of an authentic r-f vase-painting, and could have been prefabricated at d’Hancarville’s behest to titillate customers. On escaping Naples he went to live in Florence under the patronage of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which may account for his support for Etruscan influence over Greek art, although he also agreed with Winckelmann that vases found around Naples were of Greek origin, and not Etruscan. 18   Letter to Horace Walpole 30 January 1773, Walpole (1937) 456. 19   Momigliano (1983) 281. 20   BL Add. MSS 40714/230. 21   Volumes III and IV of AEGR, which are supposed to be a description of the vases, are mostly taken up with d’Hancarville’s dissertation on sculpture. 15 16

  Hamilton wrote several money-orders to Messrs. Hart & Wilkens (his bankers) to pay d’Hancarville, one on 27 Jan. 1768 for the huge sum of 1,318 Ducats. (BL Add. MSS 40714/26). Unfortunately, almost all of Hamilton’s large archive of accounts at the BL lists payments only under sundries or services, but this was soon after the publication of the first two volumes of the vases, so this is the most likely reason. 23   Depicting a variety of different shaped oinochoai hanging from the walls by nails, plus a hydria and a large bell-krater standing at the foot of the body. 24   See Ramage (1990), Jenkins & sloane (1996), Burn (1997), Coltman (2006). 25   Villard (1989) 177 states ‘les vases peints d’Italie du Sud ont formé le fonds des premières collections importantes de céramique grecque (les deux collections Hamilton, de 1764 à 1800) … et de la première exposition publique de vases grecs (au British Museum, en 1772) – ce sont done surtout des vases italiotes qui ont fourni la première image de la céramique et la peinture grecques, jusqu’à ce que la connaissance des vases de ‘Grèce propre’. 26   Even this was by ticket only; museum exhibitions of Greek vases, permanently open to the general public, were not established until the 19th century. It was Victorian provincial museums such as Birmingham and Manchester that later pioneered making good design accessible to all, not the BM. 22

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The second half of the 18th century

Figure 18a A newly opened tomb near Naples – interior

Figure 18b A newly opened Tomb near Naples - exterior

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Until the opening of the large Etruscan necropolis at Vulci in 1828, Attic vases were only being found in small quantities, mostly at Nola, and almost none from Attica itself.27 This scarcity, and their often finer workmanship, made them all the more desirable, and brought about their eventual supercedence in importance over South Italian vases. D’Hancarville believed that the Attic vases found at Nola were probably made there:

The second collection was published by William Tischbein (1751-1829), director of the Royal Academy of Painting at Naples, in four volumes between 1791 and 1795 entitled Collection of engravings from ancient vases mostly of pure Greek workmanship: discovered in sepulchres in the Kingdom of the two Sicilies but chiefly in the neighbourhood of Naples during the course of the years MDCCLXXXIX and MDCCLXXXX now in the possession of Sir Wm. Hamilton … with remarks on each vase by the collector.31 This was almost certainly done with a view to selling the collection, partly for funds: he was already writing in 1794, ‘If I could get home what I have here in pictures, furniture and antiquities, I shou’d be able to pay off my debts.’32 But he also wanted to save them from the French. In 1795 he wrote:

Of all the countries in Europe Campania is that in which the greatest quantity of antique vases are found, and it is for this reason, that it has been suspected that the principle manufactures of them, were at Nola, which is at the foot of Vesuvius, at Capua, famous for its delights which detained Hannibal.28 Hamilton sold his first collection of vases to the British Museum in 1772. All academic publications that state the sale price say that Parliament voted £8,410 to purchase the collection, but none have commented on this odd amount. The amount becomes less arbitrary when converted to 8,000 guineas (the remaining 9.5gns. being stamp duty or legal fees). In fact, from the 1660s to 1817 the guinea became a standard unit of currency used more often than the sovereign, and guineas remained the currency for art sales up until the early 1970s. Someone has converted the amount to pounds for those not familiar with guineas and consecutive authors have copied it, thus causing confusion. It may be significant that Hamilton’s accounts for September 16, 1771 (some months before the sale of his vases), shows a payment by him of £8,241, (nearly identical to the price raised for the vases) ‘To amount of the house per agreement with Major General Clerk and the dowager Countess of Warwick’.29 This purchase could be the real reason Hamilton had to sell his vases.

What a pity that Italy shou’d be robb’d of its finest marbles, pictures & bronzes, which you see by what had happen’d at Parma will certainly be the case shou’d the French advance.33 The second collection was published in a much cheaper and simpler format than its sumptuous predecessor, with uncoloured copper outline-engravings.34 Hamilton gives philanthropic and didactic reasons for doing this: The magnificent Edition of my first Collection of Vases … became too expensive a work to answer the purpose, which I first intended, when I encouraged that Publication, for young Artists are not often in a situation of making such a purchase; to obviate that material objection I have now confined this new Publication to the simple outline of the figures of the Vases, which is the essential, and no unnecessary Ornaments, or colouring have been introduced; by these means the purchase becoming easy, it will be in the power of Lovers of Antiquity, and Artists to reap the desired profit from such excellent models, as are now offer’d to them.35

Hamilton swore that he would never collect vases again after publishing and securing a good price for his collection. But the temptation of being in Naples while new caches of vases were being uncovered in the region was too much (even though excavating had been officially banned). By 1789, when the ban was lifted, Hamilton was again collecting voraciously and boasted to his nephew Charles Greville that, ‘I have not let one essential vase escape me’,30 and was preparing his second collection for publication.

Count Italinski36 wrote most of the descriptions of the vases (in a much more concise and succinct way than   Vol. I: 1791, Vol. II & III: 1795, there is no title page to date Vol. IIII. In Volume III, Hamilton said that volume IIII, which will contain all the vases found in Sicily, is soon to be published, but it is very rare compared with the first three. The BL, Cambridge, and the Bibliothèque Nationale do not have it, and Oxford and the ICS only have the plates without the title page. Only the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the BM have a separately bound vol. IIII with a title page, but this is the title page from vol. II, which has had two more digits added in fine neat pencil to make it read volume IIII. It seems there never was any text to vol. IIII, nor even a proper title page. There is no mention of Sicily, and all but pls. 10, 14 & 57 (probably S.I.) appear to show Attic vases. Also, Tischbein had made plates for a fifth volume, but the collection of vases was sold and it was not published. This all suggests a last minute rush due to the French onslaught. 32   Morrison (1893-4) 238. 33   Morrison (1893-4) 282. 34  With the exception of a superior quality frontispiece to volume I of the famous scene of Sir William and Lady Emma present at the opening of a tomb. 35  Tischbein (1791) i. Introduction. 36  Antiquarian and Counsellor of the Russian Embassy to the Neapolitan Court. 31

This new collection contained a much higher proportion of Attic vases which must have been obtained from Nola (the only significant local source of Attic wares). According to the title of Hamilton’s second publication, he was not acquiring vases from the Etruscan tombs being plundered north of Rome, but ‘chiefly in the neighbourhood of Naples.’

  See Lyons (2007).   D’Hancarville (1766-7) vol. I: xviii. 29   BL Add. MSS 40714/114. 30   Morrison (1893-4) 182. 27 28

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The second half of the 18th century d’Hancarville, with none of his deviations and ramblings), and Tischbein made the drawings and supervised the plates, some of which were altered to please the current taste. Tischbein justified the reworking of vase-painting with more detail by engravers such as M. Pecheux by saying, ‘One can see the profits of improving antiquity’, by comparing it to the repairing of ancient sculpture which was popular at that time.37

of vases, and have an excellent project for that purpose in a good way if the cursed French do not disturb it.’39 The collection of around one thousand vases was shipped off to England in 1801 to escape Napoleon’s advancing army, but about one third was lost when the worn-out and illequipped HMS Colossus foundered on a reef and sank off Samson Island in the Scilly Isles.40 The remainder of Hamilton’s surviving second vase collection was purchased (after offers from the royal courts of Russia and Prussia failed to materialise) by Thomas Hope in the same year for £4,000: somewhat less than the £7,000, reduced to £5,000, that Hamilton had originally hoped to recoup.

Hamilton took the opportunity to record his beliefs concerning the Greek origins of the vases in his second collection and finally dispel the old established Etruscan misnomer. From Naples on March 10th, 1791 he wrote an open letter to the Earl of Leicester, President of the Antiquary Society, in the introduction to volume I of the second collection:

Winckelmann Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) is generally considered to be the founder of the true study of ancient Greek art, as diverse from the Rome centred study of classical art. He was called ‘the father of modern art history and archaeology as well as art criticism’,41 albeit this was not always the opinion of his contemporaries: Fuseli remarked ‘Winckelmann was the parasite of the fragments that fell from the conversation or the tablets of Mengs’.42

MYLORD In consequence of His Sicilian Majesty’s having lately taken off the Prohibition to search for Antiquities, which prohibition had long subsisted in this Kingdom, several Excavations have been made by the Proprietors of Land in the neighbourhood of Nola, S. Agata de Goti, Trebbia, S. Maria di Capua … in Puglia, and in other parts of the Two Sicilies, and many Sepulchres have been discovered containing Earthen Vases of beautiful forms, with Elegant figures, either drawn, or painted on them, of the sort that have been usually called Etruscan Vases, altho there now seems to be little doubt of such monuments of Antiquity being truly Grecian.

Although South Italian savants such as Paoli and Mazzocchi43 had previously commented on the Greek inscriptions on vases (as much in a regional challenge to the recalcitrant Tuscan etruscomaniacs as in any attempt to get to the truth), Winckelmann was the first to categorically take black- and red-figure vases away from the Etruscans and lay them squarely with the Greeks.44 He did this by observing two simple and irrefutable facts: 1. Those vases that were inscribed were always in Greek; 2.

Hamilton expanded on this in volume II, even suggesting that he influenced Winckelmann: The opinion I offer’d in my first volume, of these Vases being Grecian, and not Etruscan, has been fully justified by the late discoveries at Athens, and in the Island of Milo, where ancient Vases have been found in sepulchres, with figures on them exactly similar to those found in this Kingdom, and in Sicily; I remember to have pointed out, many years ago, to the Abbé Winkelman, some figures, on these Vases in my first Collection, far superior in elegance to any that have ever been seen on Etruscan monuments: which circumstance added to that of the inscriptions on them being Greek, as is also on Architecture, convinced that learned Antiquary of this sort of Vases being erroneously attributed to the Etruscans, when they were in fact Greek.38

  Morrison (1893-4) no. 282.   For the HMS Colossus vases see CVA GB 20 in which Smallwood and Woodford give an extensive examination of the surviving sherds and the corresponding plates in Tischbein. They also give an overview history of Hamilton’s time in Naples, his vase collections and the recovery of the sherds. The price paid by the BM for Hamilton’s first collecton is not correctly recorded in CVA GB 20. 41   Howard (1992) 30. 42   Henry Fuseli quoted in Howard (1992) 32. 43   Mazzocchi (1754) 137-9. 44   However, his dating of Greek colonisation of Italy is confused. He said: ‘The second migration of the Greeks to Etruria took place about three hundred years after Homer’s time [Homer’s time then thought to be 850 BC based on Herodotus], and the same number of years before Herodotus, according to the calculation of time given by this historian himself; that is to say, in the days of Thales and of Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver’ (1881) 221. This makes no sense: by 300 years after Homer’s time he means the 850 BC + 300 = 550 BC, but he then said, ‘And 300 years before Herodotus’, presumably meaning 300 years before 450 BC, thus returning to 750 BC. Herodotus himself dates Homer and Hesiod 400 years before his time (2.53). We could assume that the figure of 300 years before Herodotus is an error, either inadvertent of Winckelmann or of the translator. Herodotus uses the term Tyrsenoi (=Tyrrhenian) for Etruscans. The Lydian foundation of Etruria is mentioned at Hdt 1.94, dated to the reign of Atys son of Manes (this is, on Herodotus’ dating [1.7], well into the second millennium BC). However, presumably Winckelmann is here referring to the Phocaean expedition to the West (1.163-7): this is around 550, so 100 years before Herodotus, and therefore 300 years after Herodotus’ date for Homer. Thales is mentioned at 1.170, in a relatively close chronological context. On Herodotus’ own chronology, Lycurgus (Hdt. 1.65) has to be at least a bit earlier (and if he was guardian of Leobotas, quite a lot earlier, cf. 7.204), but Winckelmann could be down-dating him. 39 40

But it was not long before this collection was also sold off. Hamilton wrote in 1795, ‘I mean to sell my collection  Tischbein (1791) i. 10. Trendall (1935) 46, refutes Hamilton’s assertion that ‘The learned antiquarian may make his dissertations from these drawings as if he had the vase itself before him’ Tischbein (1793) i 10, (Trendall must mean 1791) and accuses Tischbein of Atticising his figures and minimising the local characteristics. The plates for the 4th volume are the most aesthetically pleasing, but the least accurate to the vases. Facial expressions, especially eyes, have been enhanced, and breasts and buttocks have been made more voluptuous. 38   In Tischbein (1795) 4. 37

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Identical vases were being found on Sicily, which had been a Greek colony, but never under the thrall of the Etruscans. Winckelmann stated:

And he goes on to cite the earthen vessels of Campania, Campana Supellex, mentioned by Horace as among his household articles.49

…the principle proof against the Tuscans is furnished partly by the most beautiful of the vases of this kind, which were discovered and collected in Sicily, and which, according to the account of my friend, Baron von Riedesel, -who, as a connoisseur of antiquities and arts, travelled throughout Sicily and Magna Graecia, -perfectly resemble the most beautiful vases that are contained in the museums at Naples; and partly by the Greek writing on several of them.45

Despite his devotion to Greek art, Winckelmann apparently subscribed to the prevailing belief in the eminence of Etruscan art. In his History of Ancient Art (1764) book III, he devotes the first three chapters to the art of the Etruscans and begins: After the Egyptians, the Etruscans were the first, of the nations of Europe, to practise the arts, which began to flourish among them even at an earlier date, as it appears, than among the Greeks. Hence, the art of the Etruscans, particularly in regard to its antiquity, merits more than ordinary attention, especially as their earliest works which have been preserved give us an idea of the most ancient Greek works which resembled them, but of which none are in existence.

Three vases, marked with Greek writing, are contained in the Mastrilli collection at Naples, which were made known, for the first time, by Canon Mazzochi.46 Another vase, with the inscription KALLIKLΕS KAΛΟS, “The Beautiful Kallicles,” is contained in the same collection; there is, moreover, to be seen there a cup of terracotta, with Greek letters on it. Now, as not a single one of these works with Etruscan writing on it has hitherto been discovered, it follows of course that the letters, no longer to be distinguished, on two beautiful vases in the collection of Signor Mengs, at Rome, are not Etruscan, but Greek; …one …may be seen signed in the following form: AΛSIΜΟS EΓRΑYE, “Alsimos painted it.” This inscription has been erroneously read by others, MΑXIΜΟS EΓRΑYE; and Gori, to whose system the writing is hostile, boldly pronounces it a deception, without having seen the vase itself.

… From this comparison, it appears clear that circumstances at that time, among the Etruscans, were far more favourable to art than they were among the Greeks.50 However, he goes on to concede: But I shall chiefly attempt to show, in the first place, that, if art was not planted by the Greeks among the Etruscans, it had at least been much promoted by them. We infer this, partly from the Greek colonies which established themselves in Etruria, but yet more from the ideas drawn from Greek fable and history, which are represented by the Etruscan artists on the larger number of their works.51

The proof which arises from the writing, as well as from the style of the drawing, extends also to other vases without any writing, and warrants the ascription of them to Greek artists; and is confirmed by vases of a like kind and workmanship, found in Sicily.47

Winckelmann met William Hamilton in 1766 and said he was asked by him to write the introduction to the publication of his vase collection. Winckelmann wrote from Rome to Baron Stosch in 1767 saying, “If I agree to such a labour I will not escape torture for all eternity and will have to give up all thoughts of travelling freely.”52 However, from a letter written by the ‘Baron d’Hancarville’, Griener suggests that Hamilton and d’Hancarville had planned the whole thing as a partnership from the beginning.53 Albeit, whatever may have transpired, Winckelmann’s murder in 1768 precluded any further involvement, and the job was given to d’Hancarville. However, he saw the unpublished plates before he died and wrote to Stosch in April 1767, “A work of this kind has never before been published.”54 He

In perhaps one of the earliest references to the distinction between Greek and South Italian vase-makers, Winckelmann writes: If therefore we deny that the artists of Etruria proper had any share in the production of these vases … our judgement hangs suspended between the Campanians and the Greeks; and hence a clearer explanation is required. It is very probable that vases by Campanian artists are found among this painted pottery.48

  Winckelmann (1881) 262. ‘Cena ministratur pueris tribus, et labis albus pocula cum cyatho duo sustinet adstat echinus vilis, cum patera gutus, Campana supellex’ (Satires I, vi, 8). 50  Winckelmann (1881) 220. 51  Winckelmann (1881) 221. 52   Briefe (1956) iii:318. 53   Griener (1992) 118-20. 54   Briefe (1956) iii: 246. Winckelmann also records that in October 1767 he stayed with d’Hancarville whilst in Naples in April 1767, and gives a vivid description of him leading them on a digging expedition: Writing in a letter to his close friend and correspondent, W. von Stosch, Winckelmann said: ‘Wednesday, towards evening, we were escorted by the celebrated adventurer, formally the so-called Baron de Han … 49

  Winckelmann never managed to get to Sicily. Like so much of his pioneering work, it had to be done once removed from the original source, e.g. Greek sculpture through Roman copies. 46  At this point in the 1881 English translation, Lodge inserts a paragraph about inscriptions on Hamilton’s vases which was not in Winckelmann’s 1764 original. 47  Wincklemann (1881) 262-3. 48  Winckelmann (1881) 262. 45

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The second half of the 18th century also boasted that the writing of the text had been reserved for him.

had never seen or heard of any sets of the plates being sold without the accompanying text. I also examined four sets of these volumes61 and in each set the text and plates were on identical paper, in one case with consecutive watermarks, and there was no evidence of them having been previously bound separately. One copy had uncut edges on plates and text that were identical, and the others had smooth edges that had been stained red at the same time. However, demonstration plates were run off to show publishers and potential customers, and Hamilton did write to his nephew Greville on 6th June 1790 that ‘I am only superintending the publication of about 50 or 60 prints of the vases which are most interesting in point of subject & elegance of design.62

I have encountered considerable confusion (and apparent skulduggery55) concerning what Winckelmann actually said, in particular, his encounters with Hamilton, because the first edition of his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764) is not only a very rare volume, but it is printed in a particularly obtuse gothic font. This has tempted some authors of vase publications56 to use Huber’s revised translation into French of 1789, or even Lodge’s 1881 translation into English. Although these are much more approachable works, many insertions have been placed in the text as if they were written by Winckelmann. One paragraph pasted into the text has Winckelmann saying (two years before he met Hamilton and three years before the Hamilton volumes appeared):

D’Hancarville’s attempts to date the vases in Hamilton’s collection were based on arbitrary evidence and the allegorical stories of the ‘invention of art’ in Pliny. However, he was able to pronounce dates that were not that far off the mark, and were certainly more accurate than previous dating assertions such as those of La Chausse. Referring to Hamilton’s ‘Hunt Krater’63 he states:

At last, and subsequently to all the lovers of such earthen productions just named, Mr. Hamilton, of whom I have made frequent mention, collected a still larger, and more select, number of them, which have been published by M. d’Hancarville, together with the choicest specimens of the Mastrilli and Porcinari collections.57

Painting in its beginning knew only simple out-line which they afterwards filled up with one colour, this gave the name of Monocromate to that sort of Painting. Ardices of Corinth and Telephanes of Sycione [sic] were, according to Pliny, the first who practised painting, however they did not make use of colours.

In fact, the first and Winckelmann’s only lifetime edition of Geschichte, makes no mention of Hamilton or d’Hancarville, although many of the famous collectors of the day, such as Mengs, Mastrilli and Gori, are frequently referred to, their names emboldened in the text.58

A Corinthian called Cleophanes afterwards invented Colours (cos colores) which he made with pieces of baked earthen ware vases pounded, (Testa ut Ferunt Trita) these earths may have given him black, white and a red approaching the Rubrick. The painting of our Vase unites the interior lines of Ardices and Telephanes [with] the Art of Cleophantes, for you here see the white, the black, and the red which he invented. One may then believe that this Vase was made about the time of Cleophantes. This Artist, if we give credit to Cornelius Nepos, accompanied Demeratus Father of Tarquin the Elder into Italy, so he was a contemporary of Cypselus and lived in the 30th Olympiad [therefore] it is probable that this Vase was made at the latest towards the year 4056 of the Julian period, or 658 years before Christ.64

D’Hancarville did not perhaps do the diligent job that Winckelmann agonised he would be taking on. Some of the vase plates were not described in the same volume in which they appeared and a substantial portion was not given any write-up at all. Von Bothmer suggests that Winckelmann was able to see the plates before the volumes were published because, ‘In those days before photography and editorial boards, publications were begun with the plates, while the text was written and printed later.’59 Two prominent London antiquarian book dealers, whom I consulted60 both said that they had handled a number of sets of Hamilton’s first vase collection and (whose real name is Hancarville) who went in front with a pick-axe and we followed with our shoes burst apart, so that our soles burnt under our feet.’ Briefe (1956) iii: 317. Whether d’Hancarville showed envy or reverence for Winckelmann seems not to be recorded, but he did design an engraving of an imaginary grand tomb for Winckelmann, published in volume II of the Hamilton collection, 1770. 55   G.H.Lodge, in his 1881 English edition, translates word for word long additions from Huber’s French translation which were not in Winckelmann’s original, but he declares on his title page, ‘A Translation from the German’, without acknowledging Huber. 56   E.g. Rouet (2001), Scott (2003); Tillyard (1923) & Nørskov (2002) use later German editions with large unacknowledged additions to Winckelmann’s original. 57  Winckelmann (1881) 264. 58   ‘… a series of copiously annotated editions in French and Italian appeared over the next few decades … swelled by notes and addenda by later scholars’, Potts (1994) 13. 59  Von Bothmer (1987) 186. 60   M. Finney, Museum St., & A. Edmonds, Lexington St.

Now dated to 575-550 BC, d’Hancarville’s dating of the ‘Hunt Krater’ was less than 100 years out. Winckelmann was the first to interpret the KAΛΟS inscriptions on cups in his Monumenti antichi inediti published in 1767, which also included illustrations of a number of vases found in South Italy by Mastrilli.

 Two at M. Finney, one at the B.L. and one at the Warburg Institute.   Morrison (1894) 182. 63   Now BM B37. 64   D’Hancarville (1767) i. 160-2. 61 62

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery After Hamilton and others65 had published their collections with an eye to attracting buyers,66 a taste for books of engravings of vases for their own sake came into vogue. A spate of sumptuous folios of vase illustrations (virtually all South Italian) were published with short introductions to give them a certain scholarly legitimacy.67 There were offshoots from this fashion for publishing lavishly illustrated books of vase collections. In Rome in 1794, Frederick Rehberg published Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes, Drawings faithfully copied from nature at Naples, Dedicated to Sir William Hamilton, a set of twelve black line etchings with a terracotta watercolour wash, resembling black-figure vases [fig.19]. While Lord Nelson was staying with the Hamiltons, Emma would strike her celebrated ‘Attitudes’, posing for an audience of admiring gentlemen in classically derived dramatic positions. These twelve prints show consciously posed tableaux that copy the iconographic style of South Italian vases. In three of the prints, Lady Hamilton uses vases from Sir William’s collection as props. In one she holds up a kylix in the gesture of a libation, while a small squat lekythos rests on a pillar beside her. In the second, she walks with a footless kylix held in front while a trefoil-lipped oinochoe hangs from her other hand. In the third, she lies stretched on the ground in the style of a figure in an Apulian vase painting, with her arms clasping a huge trefoil-lipped oinochoe. In another she sits in a chair identical to that shown on a redfigure hydria from her husband’s collection.68

Figure 19 Federick Rehberg, ‘Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes’

Other British Collections Since you were here I have dealt pretty considerably in Etruscan vases…acknowledged by Antiquarians to be the most ancient Monuments of the Fine Arts that now exist. The subjects represented upon some of them exhibit certain religious Rites of the ancient Greek and Egyptian Mythology, and more particularly of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which neither the Paintings of Herculaneum nor even Antique Sculpture have hitherto handed down to us.70

James Clark (1745-1800), a painter and antiquities dealer, lived in Naples for 30 years in a similar situation to (and indeed under the patronage of) James Byres in Rome. After many years of hardship earning a pittance as a cicerone,69 he later became a procurer of vases. He wrote to an old client, the traveller Thomas Chinnal Porter, in 1791:

Clark had close connections with Hamilton, and saw to the packing and dispatch back to England of Hamilton’s second collection in 1800-1. The last entry in the inventory Clark made reads: ‘Mr. Clark having been confined to his house very ill for fifteen days … he therefore could not supervise the packing of [this last] case.’71

  Hope, Denon and Coghill see infra p.61, 74, & 88. 66  This is a selling stratagem that has continued into the 20th century: Count Tyszkiewicz’s vase collection was published by Fröhner in 1902 and then sold to the British Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Sadly, the important Hope Collection was sold off in 1917 before its subsequent publication in 1923 by Tillyard. This, combined with the fact that the Great War was at its height, resulted in a lack of interest and poor prices (it is hard to gauge equivalent modern values: Tillyard (1923) 3, considered the prices to be high), and many vases disappearing into unknown collections. Trendall said: ‘To illustrate how quickly vases may vanish from sight we have only to turn to the Hope Collection, sold by auction at Christie’s in 1917; of the twenty or so Paestan vases it contained, the present whereabouts of more than half cannot be traced’ (1936) vii. In recent times well produced illustrated auction room sales catalogues have simultaneously combined publishing a collection with selling it; e.g. the Castle Ashby Collection, Christie’s, 2 July 1980, also published as a volume of CVA. 67   For the taste for expensively produced and illustrated books of vase collections in the 2nd half of the 18th century see Lissarrague & Reed (1997). 68   Now BM E 195, ARV2 1077.1, CVA GB 8 pl.87.3. Whether a reproduction of this chair had been commissioned by Hamilton, or Rehberg copied it from the vase may be speculated. 69   Guide to a city, particularly to antique monuments. 65

Clark advertised his vases as, ‘Elegant Ornaments for Chimney-pieces, or upon tables in drawing rooms, as suitable decorations for Libraries, placed over the Book-Cases, or upon Brackets against the wall.’ He also recommended his smaller vases for ‘Ladies Toilets, and small Museums.’72 After his death Clark’s remaining stock of sculpture and vases was sold at Christie’s on 9th June   Porter MSS. 70/262/49 (24 Sept. 1791), quoted in Ingamells (1997) 209.. 71   Perceval MSS, Fitzwilliam Museum. 72   Ingamells (1997) 209. 70

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The second half of the 18th century 1802, presumably having been brought back to England from Naples.

influenced by the Pompeian style.80 Hope was admitted to the society of Dilettanti in 1800, and was keen to educate the public about classical taste. He gave admittance to his house by ticket from 1804. Henry Moses81 engraved the plates for Hope’s Designs of Modern Costume (1812) (actually Regency costume based on women from redfigure vases), and Costumes of the Ancients (1812).82 Hope designed costumes for his wife to blend with the interior of Duchess Street and an engraving of 1812 by George Dawe entitled ‘The Hon. Mrs. Thomas Hope’ shows her standing in a Greek vase pose from an illustration in Costumes of the Ancients, wearing a black regency dress bordered with red-figure patterns, and a matching black-figure shawl bordered in black palmettes [fig.20].83

William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough73 (17041793), a member of the Society of Dilettanti from 1736 and a trustee of the British Museum from 1768, had visited Athens and Constantinople as early as 1738. He was initially an ardent collector of gems, but when his wife (who was also passionate about gems) died in 1760, he sold his collection of gems and his county seat, Ingress Abbey in Kent, and commissioned Sir William Chambers to build him a house at Roehampton to house his collection of antiquities. It was designed with a grand hall of sculpture on the ground floor, and vaulted catacombs below where his ‘Etruscan’ vases and cinerary urns could be exhibited in niches.

Hope’s country house, Deepdene, near Dorking in Surrey, was similarly decorated in the classical style, and even the interior doors had peripheral red-figure motifs. His son, Henry Thomas Hope, continued to increase the collection, and moved it all down to Deepdene sometime after his father’s death.84

Two of Bessborough’s daughters married antiquities collectors: Lord Fitzwilliam and the Duke of St. Albans who, along with Townley and many aristocratic collectors, were among the bidders at the sale of their father-in-law’s collection at Christie’s in 1801.

The Hope Collection was the biggest collection of vases in Britain still in private hands in the 19th century, a substantial minority of which were South Italian, including some of the finest pieces such as the Paestan bell-krater with Python’s scene of Orestes at Delphi,85 and the Cumaean amphora with the fight over the body of Patroclus.86 Other great collections like Hamilton’s first collection and the Townley collection were purchased by the British Museum, and that at Castle Ashby, although some of the vases may have been finer, was not as large as Hope’s. Hope had assembled a considerable amount of vases before purchasing the second Hamilton collection and Millin stated in 1806 that Hope had 1500 vases, also buying from the Cawdor and Sir James Coghill sales.87 Hope later sold off some of the lesser vases, and there has been dispute as to whether the rest of the collection remained fairly intact until it was sold off by Christie’s in 1917: Henry Thomas Hope died in 1861 and Michaelis visited Deepdene in that year, and again in 1877. Describing the contents he saw on his second visit he said: ‘Of the collection of vases, only a remnant is preserved.’88 And again: ‘Before the South Front of the House: The remains of a collection of vases, that was once much larger, are placed in a spacious room.’89

Richard Payne Knight74 (1751-1824) was wealthier than many of his contemporaries and predominantly a collector of classical sculpture, which he purchased on his visits to Rome. But he also collected figured vases (probably being influenced by his association with Hamilton with whom he spent much time in Naples, and also with d’Hancarville75). He acquired over 50 vases, more than half being South Italian red-figure.76 He bought from the Chinnery Sale (3-4 June 1812) and the Coghill Sale (18-19 June 1819), both held at Christie’s auction rooms, paying as much as £30 for one red-figure vase.77 However, he does not seem to have been a great connoisseur of vases, as he said he wanted them as suitable ornaments for the tops of his cases.78 The Hope Collection Thomas Hope79 (1770-1831) bought a house designed by Robert Adam in Duchess Street, off Portland Place, the interior of which he totally designed himself in the classical style. No expense was spared in creating the overall effect: fireplaces, chairs, couches, beds, standing candelabra, chandeliers, were custom made copying images seen on Greek vases and from ancient sculpture and relief. D’Hancarville’s plates of vase-paintings were transcribed to furniture and fittings. The house was also heavily

  See Hope’s household design folio (1807).   See infra p.96. 82 Printed in a tiny private edition issued in 1812, but published in 1823, after Hope’s death, in a large popular edition.  83  Thomas Hope had himself painted by Sir William Beechey in 1798, dressed in full Turkish costume with dagger and turban and Hagia Sofia in the background. 84   Michaelis (1882) 279. 85  Tillyard (1923) no. 267; Trendall (1987) 145, no.244, pl.91, now BM 1917.12-10.1. 86  The ‘Capo di Monte vase’, Tillyard (1923) no. 283, pl. 34, 39. now lost, Tillyard had to use drawings to illustrate it. Heavily restored, but with interesting iconography of the battle over the body of Patroklos. Also portrays a wedding scene on the reverse and Hector’s farewell (?) on the neck. 87   For Millin and Coghill see chapter IV. 88   Michaelis (1882) 107. 89   Michaelis (1882) 293. 80 81

  Made a trustee of the British Museum in 1770 (DNB).   He became Vice President of the Society of Antiquaries. For RPK see Clarke & Penny (1982) and DNB. 75   D’Hancarville got RPK into much trouble by influencing him to write a book on the worship of Priapus which scandalised society (DNB). 76   Many of the best examples now on display in the South Italian room at the British Museum. 77  Vase not traceable. Although £30 was a large sum, it was relatively modest compared with the volute krater purchased by Lord Cawdor in 1790 for 1,000 gns., see Soane infra p.66. 78  Aberdeen Papers 43230.f.117, quoted by Liscomb (1979) 606. 79   DNB. See also Watkins (1968) and the forth-coming Watkin & HewatJaboor (2008). 73 74

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 20 George Dawe, Mrs. Thomas Hope in a gown inspired by figured vases

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The second half of the 18th century But E.M.W. Tillyard in The Hope Vases (1923) disputes that the collection was depleted, saying that Michaelis’ account of his first visit ‘describes quite adequately the vase collection as I found it in 1912.’90 Perhaps Henry Hope’s widow had been overburdened by the extent of her husband’s collection of antiquities and had some of it packed away. Certainly only 357 vases were left (of the 1500 estimated by Millin to be in the collection in 1806) when Tillyard finally put together a catalogue of them in 1923.91

Furtwängler’s reading of Helene;98 and a neck-amphora from Nola with a male and female figure, which he referred to as being of a ‘Barbarous Italian, presumably Campanian fabric.’99 This dearth of South Italian vases is marked compared with the very high quality of the many named Attic vases and especially the East Greek ‘Northampton Amphora,’ that Boardman refers to as ‘in its way unique’.100 The Castle Ashby collection is of interest here primarily because it shows how location and personal conditions can dictate the themes and contents of collections. The answer to the lack of South Italian vases in the Marquess’ collection surely lies in the fact that he concentrated on digging almost exclusively at Vulci where the finds were made up to a large extent of the finest Attic pieces ever found. He also purchased from the Canino collection (which was made up of vases excavated at Vulci) and the Hope collection. The make-up of the collection might have been quite different if the Marquess had been resident at Naples rather than Rome.

Henry Thomas’ only child, Henrietta, married the Duke of Newcastle (also a Hope) and Deepdene and the antiquities passed to him. The collection went through an uncared-for period when the tenant (The Duchess of Marlborough) had the ancient sculptures dumped in a disused ice-house as she disapproved of nudity. All access to the collection was denied92 until the house was leased to Lord Queenborough in 1909.93 The Hope Collection has a particular significance here in that Tillyard used many pieces from it as examples to advance his theories of the developement of South Italian vases in the introduction to his 1923 catalogue.94

Newtimber Place and Others Newtimber Place near Hassocks in West Sussex was originally a moated Tudor house, but it has undergone extensive restructuring over the centuries. Around 1796 the front hall was decorated with huge murals of red-figure vases on the north and west walls, above the fireplace, and extending to the furniture: all taken from Hamilton’s volumes. Any recorded evidence of the exact date the hall was decorated with these designs has been lost. John Kiechler101 suggests either Biagio Rebecca (1735-1808), who came to England from Ancona and was responsible for a large number of paintings in imitation of antique basreliefs on panels and ceilings, particularly at Windsor, the Etruscan style Rotunda Room at the Brighton Pavilion and Heaton Hall, where he also used motifs from red-figure vases, or John Francis Rigeaud (1742-1810), from Turin, who also painted in the classical style at Windsor, the ceilings at the Royal Academy, and the houses of Lords Gower, Sefton, and Aylesford.102

The Castle Ashby Collection The richest private collection in Great Britain and one of the richest in the world.95 Spencer Compton, 2nd Marquess of Northampton96 (17901851) was a president of the Royal Society and a Trustee of the British Museum, but it was his wife’s ill-health that took him to Italy in 1820 where he was inspired to build an important collection of ancient vases whilst living in Rome until the death of his wife in 1830. During his ten year sojourn he took a very active part in the archaeological milieu, funding digs at Vulci and becoming an honorary fellow of the German Institute of Rome. The small number of South Italian vases that he accumulated (20 of the 112 vases listed in the 1979 CVA) are of average or poor quality, with no large or named pieces, showing that the fashion had changed in favour of Attic vases by 1830 when the collection was being completed. Beazley, in his ‘Notes on the Vases in Castle Ashby’ of 1929, refers to only two South Italian vases in the collection (and these only in his closing paragraphs): one fine Apulian red-figure oinochoe (epichysis) from Ruvo,97 with a Judgement of Paris (that Trendall associated with the Chamay Painter) and on which Beazley read the faint inscriptions Pallas, Eros, Alexandros, and Hera, but disputed Panofka and

The panel adorning the north wall of the front hall at Newtimber is taken from a hydria in Hamilton’s first collection, volume I, plate 32: the Nuptials of Paris and Helen.103 It is an exact copy of Hamilton’s plate and shows the scene at Troy. Hecuba is seated in pride of place by a column. Helen stands before her holding her wedding crown. Behind Hecuba stands a woman bearing a cofferette (a portable chest, generally thought to have contained wedding gifts, munera sponsalitia). Paris

 Tillyard (1923) 2.   From a list that he had made some years before the 1917 Christie’s sale. See Johnston (1973) 506. 92   Furtwängler (1893) 76. 93   Deepdene was sadly demolished in 1969, the Duchess St. house in 1851. 94   See infra Tillyard, chapter VI. 95   Beazley (1929a) 1. 96   DNB. 97  Trendall & Cambitoglou (1978) 428 no. 69, CVA GB 15 pl. 56. 90 91

  Beazley (1929a) 29.   Beazley (1929a) 29 no.41, LCS 670 no. 50, CVA GB 15 pl. 55, 4,5. 100   In Christie’s (1980) 11. 101   Kiechler (1976) 175-181. 102  A third, less likely candidate is Thomas Cotton, who painted stylised animals and was working contemporaneously at another Sussex house, Sheffield Park. 103   BM E 225, ARV2 1334.27. Also interpreted as Apollo and the Muses. 98 99

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery sits next to Cassandra, who is holding a genius. This statuette is touching Paris’ forehead which d’Hancarville interpreted as an ill omen.104 Paris wears a florida vestis, a voluptuous garment meant to be worn by courtesans. The border on this panel is faithful to the vase, whereas the other two panels are not. Thomas Kirk, writing on figures from Hamilton’s vases, states, ‘The various beautiful borders which surround these designs were not so placed on the original vases, but served there merely to ornament the handles and other parts; nor the border and figures which are always upon the same vase.’105 The vase itself is also reproduced on the east chimney-piece jamb (the west chimney-piece has a representation of Nemesis from Hamilton vol. II, plate 10).

vases, including figures from the Meidias hydria (the most celebrated vase in Hamilton’s first collection). Hamilton’s volumes were becoming a quasi-pattern book for all types of English interior design. Perhaps the zenith of the influence of red-figure vases on western taste was reached in Italy itself in the Gabinetto Etrusco, at the palace of King Carlo Alberto: the Castello Reale at Racconigi near Turin [fig.21]. Designed for the King in 1834 by Pelagio Palagi, the entire room: walls, floor, ceiling, furniture, fittings and upholstery, is taken from black- and red-figure vases; even the clock is set in a stylized copy of a black-figure volute-krater,111 on a plinth showing a black-figure centauromachy. The theme is strongly South Italian, with the large dado frieze representing female heads from the necks of Apulian volute-kraters, reminiscent of the Underworld Painter. The chairs are by the cabinet maker Gabriele Capello in mahogany, inlaid with ebony. The overall effect is very striking, but has become extreme, and would not bear sustained use as a domestic environment, unlike the atmosphere of Newtimber Place.

The fireplace, dated 1630, has Ionic capitals held up by caryatids. Above this is a panel from Hamilton vol. II, plate 55: the ‘Hamilton Vase’, now attributed to the Baltimore Painter.106 The border of this panel is of flowers, not the meander and palmettes of the Hamilton plate. The vase itself is painted on the east wall. The west wall is illustrated with vol. II, plate 22: the Meidias hydria, the rape of the daughters of Leucippos by Kastor and Polydeukes.107 This theme is extended to the door panels, which are painted with single figures from red-figure vases, giving the combined effect of Pompeii wall paintings and vase scenes. It continues onto a stiffbacked sofa upholstered in tapestry with scenes from redfigure vases.

Sir John Soane The architect Sir John Soane112 (1753-1837) has left a house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields that is unique in that it is the only residence surviving with its original collection of Greek vases intact in roughly their contemporary positions, with shelves at ceiling height to hold the kraters and oinochoai, and wall-sconces especially built to hold the cups and skyphoi. Twenty of the South Italian vases are displayed in the library, above the bookcases.113 The most important vase in the collection, The Cawdor Vase,114 an Apulian Mascaroon krater found at Lecce in 1790, sits in pride of place in the window of the dining room.115 This vase was purchased from Lord Cawdor’s sale at Christie’s in 1800. Soane’s journal for that year lists ‘Paid to Mr. Taylor for vases bought at the Cawdor Sale’ a number of items, one costing £68.05.00 (far more than the others) must be the Cawdor Vase.

The Etruscan Room at Osterley Park, Middlesex, was decorated entirely with red-figure vase designs. Horace Walpole described it as ‘Painted all over like Wedgwood’s ware, with black and yellow grotesques…it is [like] going out of a palace into a potter’s field.’108 The room contained tapestries, carpets, glass, velvet and satin, all based on redfigure vase designs, mainly furnished by the firm of Henry Clay of Covent Garden.109 In 1771 Nathaniel Curzon, first Lord Scarsdale, commissioned Louisa Courtauld and George Cowles to make three silver vases in the shape of miniature lebes gamikoi, to be used as condiments in his Robert Adam designed dining room at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. 110 The vases were engraved with scenes from Hamilton’s

Soane bought the majority of his vases (40 of the 61 in total) from the James Clark sale at Christie’s in 1802. Of the 61 vases, 33 are South Italian: 9 are listed as South Italian without region; 11 Apulian;116 8 Campanian; and 5 Maker not catalogued, but quite possibly made by Francesco Colonnese, whose Naples factory was making very similar earthenware copies of Apulian vases in the 1830s (examples on show in the V&A). 112   DNB, Dictionary of Architecture, Richardson (1995) . 113  An earlier inventory, made by a Mr. Spiers in 1906, lists 22. 114   Soane 101L, V538, RVAp: 931/119. 115  A photograph in Bolton (1920) fig. 7 shows it in the same position. The vase is crudely repaired and smeared in parts with a thick black paste. This may be due to the 18th century practice of vanishing vases to improve their lustre (see Burn (1997) 245) which has since hardened to a rough matt finish. Also the mascaroons are restored. Early pictures show it was once protected by a glass bell (gone by 1920). A.B. Cook (1914) 39 said Lord Cawdor paid 1,000 gns for this vase in 1790. Perhaps Soane was able to purchase it for a fraction of this sum only 10 years later because it had been badly damaged in the meantime. 116   Catalogue nos. 530 and 532 were annotated by Trendall on 10th January 1975 ‘This is not Ap. but Cam.’ 111

  D’Hancarville (1785) 82-3. 105   Kirk (1804) i. 106   BM F 284, RVAp: 860/1, pl. 319.1-2. 107   Now BM E 224, ARV2 1313.5. A scene from this vase also decorates the back panel of a Regency dinning chair now in the V & A Museum (V & A W.21-1958), Burn (1987) pl.2a. 108   July 16 1778 to Rev. W. Mason, Walpole (1937-83) vol.28, 413-4. 109   Clay owned a set of Hamilton’s volumes and wrote to him in 1775 thanking him for the inspiration they gave him and asking him to recommend a good shop in Naples to sell a new line in classical snuffboxes he had designed, see Morrison (1893-4). Sebastian Schütze in the introduction to the facsimile of Hamilton’s vases (d’Hancarville (2004) 32), refers to similar Hamilton inspired interiors on the continent: the Palazzo di Spagna in Rome; the City Palace at Potsdam; the Villa Hamilton at Wörlitz; and the Hot Springs Pavilion in Tsarskoye Selo. 110   Campbell-Hatfield (1981) 4-19. 104

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The second half of the 18th century

Figure 21 The Gabinetto Etrusco at the Palace of King Carlo Alberto Gnathian. The most numerous shape is the krater, of which there are 10, with 6 oinochoai, 5 skyphoi, 4 lekythoi, 4 cups, and one lekanis, one amphora, one hydria and a bottle. Cornelius Vermeule in his type-written, unpublished Catalogue of the Classical Antiquities in Sir John Soane’s museum (1953)117 said:

if anything, enhanced because the former are more coloured and in perfect condition.119 With the exception of the Cawdor vase, Soane’s collection of figured vases was mediocre, especially considering it was purchased at a time when collections were being dispersed onto the market. Michaelis said of Soane’s collection, ‘Non multum sed multa appears to have been his motto in collecting. Along with a few choice specimens … there is an immeasurable chaos of worthless fragments’.120 Altough Soane was one of the key British neo-classicists and leaders of design of the period, he was not in a financial postion to buy to the extent of his aristocratic contemporaries, and had to content himself in the main with amassing curios, job lots, fragments and casts.

Even when compared with other branches of classical archaeology, during Sir John’s lifetime the study of vases was in a state of disorganised infancy. Possibly more than any other set of objects in the house and museum, the vases were rightly considered by Soane as purely decorative adjuncts to the general visual effect of the library and dining room. This is borne out by the novel positions which the vases occupy in these two rooms and in the lantern of the breakfast room adjoining. In some cases only a corner of their outlines are visible to anyone standing at ordinary height.118

The Disney Collection John Disney121 (1779-1857) of The Hyde, Ingatestone, Essex, inherited and expanded a collection of antiquities which included ‘fictile’ vases that had been acquired in the 1750s and 1760s by his ancestor Thomas Brand, and Brand’s colleague Thomas Hollis, on their tours of Tuscany, Hollis’ tour of Sicily, or purchased in England.122 Disney published Museum Disneianum in 1846, including a long essay on vases. The vases in the collection came

When a gap needed to be filled, Soane purchased reproductions from Wedgwood, and there are 5 amphorae from the factory in the library display, also a hydria and one of the original first day lebes gamikoi thrown by Wedgwood himself in 1769. Vermeule said: When necessary, to fill a bracket or complete a row, Wedgwood reproductions or creations after the antique were substituted for the genuine article. The effect is,

 Vermeule (1953) 535.   Michaelis (1882) 164. 121   DNB. 122   See Gill (1990) 227. 119

120

 Vermeule’s catalogue is presently being updated for publication.  Vermeule (1953) 534.

117 118

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery from diverse sources over a period of nearly 100 years, including a kantharos originating from de Caylus, vases purchased in 1836 from the Campanari family (licenced excavators at Vulci), and the gift of a black-figure lekythos from James Christie.123 Michaelis on his tour of English houses in 1882 noted that Hyde still contained ‘vases &c. of the Disney collection’.124 A red-figure amphora, originally from Hyde, was sold by Sotheby’s at the Sir Hermann Weber sale on 22nd May 1919, and was later used by Beazley in 1925 as the name-vase of the Disney Painter.125

It is significant that Wedgwood, after conceding that the finer vases are of Greek workmanship and found, not in Etruria, but in Magna Graecia, still continues through out his catalogue (and indeed throughout the working life of the factory) to refer to these vases as ‘Etruscan’. This may be a clue to some of the confusion caused at the time as to the actual origin of these vases,128 and in our perception of how people in the 18th century saw them. Once an idea had been established, it was not seemly to alter the status quo, also there would be an overwhelming commercial imperative not to change the name of a successful brand. An example of this mindset can be seen in the way in which the gods of Greek myth continued to be called by the names of their Roman counterparts well into the 19th century.

Wedgwood Josiah Wedgwood senior (1730-95) opened a pottery factory in Staffordshire in 1769 and named it ‘Etruria’,126 and in his 1779 catalogue of vases made at the works he lists under Class XVIII, ‘Painted Etruscan Vases’ and states:

Wedgwood was to make the public more aware of pottery found in Southern Italy through his close reproductions, which are so homogeneous that, when glanced high up on the shadowy plinth of a library bookcase, they can easily be mistaken for the real thing. However, on very close inspection, Wedgwood’s red-figure vases were made in black coloured clay with red overpainting.

The vases are copied from the Antique with the utmost Exactness; as they are found in Dempster, Gori, Count Caylus, Passeri, but more especially in the most choice and Comprehensive Collection of Sir William Hamilton; which, to the Honour of the Collector, and of his nation, and for the Advantage of our Artist, is now placed in the British Museum.127

Perhaps in the early years more of Wedgwood’s copies were seen than actual Greek vases, and people were unable to discern by comparison.129 Wedgwood advertised them as Etruscan, the first vases produced at the factory on June 18th 1769130 having Artes Etruriae Renascuntur stamped on them, thus perpetuating the misnomer.

The Art of painting Vases in the Manner of the Etruscans has been lost for Ages; and Was supposed, by the ingenious Author of the Dissertation on Sir William Hamilton’s Museum, to have been lost in Pliny’s Time. The Proprietors of this Manufactory have Been so happy as to rediscover and revive this long lost Art, so as to have given Satisfaction to the most critical judges; by inventing a Set of Encaustic Colours.

A paragraph in d’Hancarville’s text to Hamilton’s vases may give a clue as to where the idea of placing vases against the wall where only one side could be seen originated: The vases, which contained these presents, belonged, without doubt, to the Gods; they were placed in a case, on the side of the Temple, as they wou’d have embarassed the service, had their [sic] been situated any where else. This case was called Repositorium. Such an arrangement which seems necessary, and taken from the nature of the things, shew us, why, the votive Vases are scarely ever painted, but on one side; and when both, the side turn’d to the wall is always of an ordinary painting, and without comparison done with less care and worse executed, than the opposite side, designed to be exposed to view.131

And as it is evident the finer Sort of Etruscan Vases, found in Magna Graecia, are truly Greek Workmanship, and ornamented chiefly with Grecian subjects…it is probable many of the Figures and Groupes upon them, preserve to us Sketches or Copies of the most celebrated Grecian Paintings; so that few Monuments of Antiquity Better deserve the Attention of the Antiquary than the painted Etruscan Vases.

Wedgwood copied many vase patterns and shapes from the Hamilton Collection, but he also used de Caylus. The owl from the skyphos illustrated on plate 55 of de Caylus’ Recueil is very closely reproduced on to the saucer of an

  For Christie and Campanari see infra p.91 & 103. 124   Michaelis (1882) 333. 125   Gill (1990) 229. 126  Wedgwood wished Etruria in Staffordshire to be a rebuilding of the ancient Etruria. The factory name (originally spelt Hetruria) was first mentioned in a letter dated August 5th 1767 (Wedgwood archive) from Wedgwood to his less famous partner, Thomas Bentley (1730-80). This name, inspired ultimately by Greek vases (the majority Italiote), had a huge impact on Staffordshire life, expanding out of all proportion to the original concept, with a local regiment called the ‘Etrurian Volunteers’, the large, travelling ‘Etrurian Choral Society’ based at the Etruscan Philharmonic Hall, also the Etrurian Publishing Company, and many other so named institutions. 127  Also in this year (1779) Wedgwood made a Jasper-ware plaque with a bust of Hamilton. 123

Or ‘nomenclature’, a much favoured word in 18th & early 19th century vase study.  129  A letter of 14/5/1813 from Lord Lansdowne to Josiah Wedgwood Jr. ordering Etruscan vases states: ‘They are to be placed upon bookcases at a considerable height near the ceiling.’ In Aug. 1813 he wrote, ‘Paint only one side as this only will be seen’. 130   Black and red encaustic lebetes gamikoi, thrown by Wedgwood himself. 131   D’Hancarville (1767-76) II: 68-70. 128

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The second half of the 18th century

Figure 22 Wedgwood, black basalt cup and saucer c.1770 copying an owl skyphos encaustic decorated black basalt cup and saucer of c.1770 by Wedgwood [fig.22], as is a stirrup-cup of an animal head copied from a similar rhyton in Montfaucon. In fact, it is probable that most of Wedgwood’s vases were copied from book-plates rather than from actual vases, many of which Wedgwood and his artisans could not have seen. Some of these vases, e.g. those in de Caylus and Montfaucon, were still in collections in Italy. D’Hancarville even gives the measurements of the parts of the vases so that potters could base their copies on them.132

met each month at the full moon, supposedly so that they had sufficient light to ride home. The members consisted of manufacturers, amateur scientists, and industrialists like Wedgwood who got together to exchange ideas. Many of the members were enthusiastic neo-classicists and inspired Wedgwood with many new ideas concerning what was fashionable and sought after by decorators and collectors. He also picked up ideas for more efficient methods of producing his pottery.134 Wedgwood’s most famous production was surely his jasper-ware135 copy of the Portland vase which was brought to England by Hamilton in 1784.136 Wedgwood had built up a close friendship with Hamilton who sent Wedgwood vases and other antiquities and advice, mainly by correspondence, there is no record of their meeting in their letters. There are several surviving drafts of letters at the Etruria Archive and the British Library thanking

In a catalogue of the Etruria Works produced in 1770 by Wedgwood’s partner, Thomas Bentley, he records that the firm had thirty-one books on vases on the shelves for reference. Books listed include Hamilton, de Caylus, Gori and de Montfaucon.133 Wedgwood also attended many meetings of the Lunar Society (known as the Lunatics) founded in 1766, who

  Schofield (1963), Uglow (2002). Jasper-ware, invented in 1775 by Wedgwood, is a dense hard stoneware, stained with metallic oxides as a background to applied white paste classical decoration.  136 This had been purchased from Hamilton by the Dowager Duchess of Portland for 1800 guineas. After her death a year later, her son, the 3rd Duke, re-purchased it from the sale of her antiquities for 980 gns. and passed it directly into Wedgwood’s keeping to make an exact copy. Wedgwood took four years to perfect this (1786-90), making trials first in black, then in lighter blue. 134 135

  D’Hancarville (1767) I: 172.   On the back of an undated letter (c.1768) to Hamilton, Wedgwood gives a roughly written list of books he recommends: Bartoli, Antichi Sepolchri, the travel books of Misson, Breval, Wright, Count Caylus, De la Chausse, Winkelmann [sic], D’Hancarville, Piranesi, Ficoroni, Bonada (BL Add. MSS 40714/230). The catalogue of the sale of Hamilton’s library at Christie’s in 1809 shows that he owned copies of Beger, Montfaucon, de Caylus, Bartoli, Gori, Passeri and Piranesi. 132 133

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Hamilton for gifts received, e.g. ‘Respects and best thanks for the fine set of antique busts which you was pleas’d to favor me with’.137 Hamilton convinced Wedgwood to include any damage by ‘the hands of time’ in his copy of the Portland Vase.

were making ‘Grecian Red’. Their advertisement announced: A similar porcelain to that made by the Ancients in Greece and Italy. Having applied figures and ornaments in black - very suitable for Hall, Billiard and Dining Room decoration. It has a surface of great smoothness.143

Despite Wedgwood’s genuine devotion to ancient figured vases, and his part in bringing them to public attention, the usually mild-mannered John Beazley was later to make an uncharacteristic diatribe against Wedgwood and his associates:

William Adams of Tunstall, Staffordshire, was in open competition with Wedgwood, among other things producing Jasper-ware, including an identical ‘Portland Vase.’ The Adams factory made ‘Etruscan Ware’ which their advertisement describes as, ‘A white semi-porcelain body having black or other self-coloured enamelled surface with Grecian and Roman subjects richly coloured in good style, some of the specimens being reproductions of Museum pieces.’ Also, ‘Egyptian Black- Being a reproduction of the art made by the Egyptians, but it may be said to be a distinct improvement.’ This idea of ‘improvement’ of ancient art-work rather than accurate representation was perpetuated throughout the 18th and into the early 19th centuries, when artists and engravers illustrating books on vases thought it legitimate to enhance their reproductions, or even to repaint or change the scenes on the actual vases, or add pictures to plain-ware.

Flaxman138 is the Beast. He, Thorvaldsen139 and Wedgwood are the Bogus Classics, as the English Preraphaelites are the Bogus Gothic and early renaissance. And nothing more.140 Wedgwood’s Competitors Wedgwood’s eldest son John cared little for pottery and went to London to become a banker. The second son, Josiah junior, who took over the factory after his father’s death, married above himself and, from his letters, seems to care more about being a gentleman than a pottery manufacturer. He wrote to his father on 13 April 1791: ‘I have been too long in the habit of looking upon myself as the equal of everybody to bear the haughty manner of those who come into a shop.’141

Although the production of Jasper-ware and in particular the ubiquitous ‘Portland Vase’ continued undiminished, copies of black- and red-figure vases died out in the Staffordshire potteries after the first quarter of the 19th century.

This was a very different attitude from the hard working, innovative and dedicated Josiah senior who had always had a client-patron relationship with his esteemed customers, 142 and was continually attempting to perfect new ideas for reproducing ancient pottery. The competitive potteries market could now steal a march on ‘Etruria’.

In France, the taste for copies of antique vases took a more leisurely path. The Sèvres factory produced vases in the classical taste, but never attempted exact reproductions, ‘fakes’, or to copy the potting or firing techniques of the ancients. Nor, except for the occasional meander or vineleaf border, did they bother to copy Greek vase-painting. It was the ‘Grecian’ or ‘Goût antique’ shape that became popular in the 1750s, 60s and 70s. Despite these vases having little to do with those being avidly collected from Italy, the Sèvres catalogue still lists them as ‘Vaze étrusque’ and ‘Vaze grec’.144

Although Wedgwood was by far the most famous producer of faux Greek pottery, early advertisements show that ancient vases were being copied well before Wedgwood’s factory was founded. Between 1690 and 1710, John, Phillip, and David Elers of Bradwell Wood, Staffordshire,

  BL Add. MSS 40714/ 230-1.   John Flaxman (1755-1826), a sculptor trained at the Royal Academy, was a classical enthusiast who supplemented his income by working as a designer for Wedgwood. He travelled to Rome in 1787 where he won many commissions and stayed until 1794. His neo-classical sculpture was sought after by wealthy patrons and institutions to adorn civic halls, stately homes and cathedral mausolea (often copying Attic funerary stelae). He also designed illustrations for editions of Homer, Hesiod and Aeschylus. 139   Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844). Neo-classical sculptor, the Danish counter-part to Flaxman. Travelled to Rome in 1797, and later lived there from 1820-38. His famous marble Polykleitan sculpture ‘Jason and the Golden Fleece’ (1803), was deeply indebted to the Doryphoros and the Apollo Belvedere. He received commissions from Pope Pius VII, Crown Prince Ludwig and many others. His neo-classical works include Venus; Cupid & Psyche; Bacchus; Apollo & Ganymede. He became Professor of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in 1807. 140   Letter from Beazley to Jacobsthal, Oxford, 15th June 1931. Oxford, Beazley Archive. 141   Quoted in Finer & Savage (1965) 337-8. 142   to his old friend Sir William Hamilton he always ended private letters formally, ‘Your much obliged and faithfully humble servant.’ 137 138

Between 1785 and 1787, the Royal Porcelain Factory at Naples made an ‘Etruscan Service’ of cups, saucers and plates, decorated with red-figure vases from the collection of King Ferdinand IV of the Two Sicilies, and presented to George III. This was an innovation, where the plain white porcelain was decorated with pictures of actual (mainly South Italian) vases, rather than making the whole piece

  From a contemporary broadsheet.  There were contemporary German imitators of Wedgwood, an example being the Rotberg factory in Gotha, that produced a frühstücksservice ‘à l’étrusque’ in 1785, a set in r-f including a coffee pot, cups and saucers, plates, milk jug and sugar bowl, now in Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. 143 144

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The second half of the 18th century into a faux Greek vase by covering the exterior with a figured vase-painting.145 In Naples in the 1830s, Francesco Colonnese made earthenware copies of 4th century Apulian originals, many taken from the publication of Hamilton’s second vase collection. These appear at first sight to be indistinguishable from the real thing, until more closely compared to Tischbein’s plates when extra invented patterns become apparent.146 Later, factories in other parts of Europe began producing fancy ‘classical’ vessels in porcelain and glass, loosely based on Greek figured pottery. One of the most remarkable and bizarre copies of an Apulian vase was a large amphora glazed in royal blue and gold, made by the long established Giustiniani factory of Naples,147 around 1830-40 [fig.23].148 The main theme of a man with a horse in a naiskos, and the surrounding figures are accurate copies of those typical on vases by the Painter of Copenhagen 4223.149 The border patterns are taken from a variety of South Italian vases, and the plastic swans(?) heads on the handles are faithfully copied from the volute-krater by the Painter of Bari 20054.150This is an authentic looking vase in all aspects, except for its totally incongruous colour scheme. In the 1840s the firm of John Fell Christy, at the Sandgate Glass Works in Lambeth, made enamelled glass copies of red-figure vases. The scenes, many taken from South Italian vases, were painted very realistically in a red of an identical tone to ancient vases, but onto very obvious shiny glass, giving an odd combination of authenticity and sham.

Figure 23 Giustiniani Factory, Naples, blue and gold amphora c.1830-40

conjunction with Vivant Denon (1747-1825),152 a diplomat at the French embassy in Naples and a dilettante, collector, and later Director of the Musée Napoléon and the Louvre, who travelled with Saint-Non. He amassed a collection of vases which were acquired by Louis XVI in 1786. SaintNon used the diary of Denon’s travels to Sicily, Calabria and Malta, and Denon wrote an appendix on Campanian vases which extensively re-uses d’Hancarville’s text. Saint-Non and Denon were clearly very influenced by d’Hancarville’s publication of Hamilton’s vases, quoted him several times as an expert on vases, and used the head and tail pieces from the Hamilton volumes for their own work.153 They also point out that their work ‘was comparable in splendour to the publication of Hamilton’s vases’, so perhaps this too was directly influenced by d’Hancarville.

In the 1860s, the firm of M.J. Richards & Co. of SanCristoforo, Milan, made bastardised Greek vase shapes in porcelain such as an amphora without handles.151 These could be decorated with Greek rhapsodes, women in peploi and Roman soldiers and a stele with an Ionian capital, bearing a sculpture of Romulus, Remus and the She Wolf on top, all in the same tableau! Added patterns at lip, neck and base in gold and black are in combinations of Mannerist decoration, meander, hook-spiral, base-rays and wild goat lotus sprays, mingled with contemporary aesthetic movement motives. Saint-Non and Denon Jean-Claude Richard (1727-1791), the painter and engraver known as the Abbé de Saint-Non, left France in 1759 to live in Rome. He published the five volumes Voyage pittoresque ou description des Royaumes de Naples et de Sicile between 1781 and 1786. He wrote ‘Voyage’ in

Vickers and Gill make the case that both d’Hancarville on Hamilton’s behalf, and Saint-Non and Denon, published their works with the express purpose of selling their vases afterwards.154 This could be a big contributing factor, but

  Dispayed in the Porcelain Gallery at Windsor Castle.   Examples on permanent display at the V & A Museum (8020-1834). 147  A dynasty of ‘maiolicari’ originating in Cerreto Sannita, in the province of Benevento in the Middle Ages. By the 18th century they were mass producing plates, tiles, figurines and pharmacy containers. 148   Now in the Museo Artistico Industriale, Naples (519=2690). 149   E.g. RVAp 17/3, pl.165.3. 150   RVAp 17/1, pl.161.1. 151 V & A Museum (8084-1862).  145 146

Sollers (1995), Lelièvre (1993). Donoyelle (1999).  Saint Non (1781-86).   Vickers & Gill (1994) 14-16 & 29. Denon sold his Campanian vases to Louis XVI for 40,000 livres. Both sales were as a direct result of the publication of these pieces. However, Jenkins (1997) 191 said: ‘Previous attempts to dismiss Hamilton’s activities in collecting and publishing his 152 153 154

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery their genuine enthusiasm for the vases themselves and antiquity in general is unmistakable in their writings and was obviously the main preoccupation of their lives.

Today we were up at Capo di Monte with the Prince of Waldeck. This where the great collection of paintings, coins etc., is located, not attractively displayed, but precious things. A great many notions about tradition are now confirmed and defined for me. The coins, gems and vases which come up north singly, like the trimmed lemon trees, look quite different in the mass, here where these treasures are indigenous. They pay a lot of money for Etruscan vases now, and certainly there are some beautiful and excellent pieces to be found among them.158

However, d’Hancarville’s reasoning that earthenware vases are of greater value than those in precious metals is unconvincing. He said that as far more clay vases were made, artists had more opportunity to practise their work, so: It would seem then, that, if to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the uses and forms of the Ancients, we had to chuse, either a collection of the Precious Vases they made, or one of their Earthen Ware, we should prefer the latter, which tho much less rich, and less ornamented than the other, furnishes our Artists however, with a much greater number of forms, points out to us many more uses, and instructs us of course much more; which may serve to determine the price and value to be set upon Collections of Vases in Clay and Bronze.155

From the fact that Goethe thought the vases he saw were all Etruscan and ‘indigenous,’ while actually being shown them and having them explained to him by Tischbein (a connoisseur and self-appointed expert on ancient vases), we can only conclude that Tischbein himself believed them to be so. Later, Goethe found Hamilton in possession of many antiques and gives us an interesting insight into his collection:

Goethe

May 27th 1787, After dining, at the urging of my friend Hackert,159 Hamilton led us into the secret vault where he keeps his artworks and his rubbish. Confusion reigns there; the products of all epochs mixed up randomly: busts, torsos, vases, bronzes.160

In September 1786 Johann von Goethe set out secretly on an extensive tour of Italy. Already famous, as his identity was revealed during his journey he was invited to meet many influential people and thereby was able to see treasures not readily accessible to the public. One of the people he met was Wilhelm Tischbein, the German artist and connoisseur who was later to publish Hamilton’s second collection. Goethe had been corresponding with Tischbein for some time and when they met in Rome they became good friends and travelling companions.

Böttiger Karl Böttiger161 (1760-1835) was director of the Museum of Antiquities at Dresden. He published Griechische Vasengemälde mit archäologischen und artistischen Erläuterungen der Originalkupfer in three volumes between 1797 and 1800. The majority of the vases referred to are from Hamilton’s collection, with the occasional vase from Dempster and de Caylus (mostly South Italian). Although in the introduction he comments on the vases themselves and the location of their finds, the main text is concerned almost exclusively with the interpretation of the mythical subjects on the vases.

In Goethe’s journal of his first Italian trip of 1786-7,156 he first mentions Tischbein in his entry for November 3rd 1786, when they went to see the Pope celebrate All Souls’ Day in his private chapel at the Quirinal Palace: I hurried to Monte Cavallo with Tischbein.157 That South Italian black- and red-figure vases were still generally considered to be of Etruscan origin at the time of Goethe’s sojourn can be seen from his journal entries at Naples: Wednesday 7th March 1787:

Luigi Lanzi The Florentine priest Luigi Lanzi (1732-1810) became a Jesuit in the Order of St Ignatius. He taught classics in several schools and, after surviving the 1773 suppression of the Jesuits, was made antiquities curator of the galleries of Florence by Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany in 1776. He was heavily influenced by the works of Winckelmann and the neoclassical artist, Anton Mengs. He was at heart an etruscophile who spent many years digging on Etruscan sites. He put together a collection of Etruscan antiquities

And so this week Tischbein conscientiously showed me a large portion of the art treasures of Naples and explained them. He continues on Friday 9th March: first vase collection as being motivated by commercial interests have failed to grasp the full complexity of his place in the development of 18th century taste and the burgeoning art market, and undervalue his status as a promoter of Enlightenment’. He goes on to point out (1997) 195 that volumes III and IV were ‘painfully produced’ and printed in 1776, four years after the vases had been sold to the BM. 155   D’Hancarville (1767-76) II: 64. 156   Not published until Nov. 1816 as Italienisch Reise. 157 Goethe (1816) 104. 

  ibid. 160-161.   Philipp Hackert (1737-1807), Prussian painter of Italian subjects.   Goethe (1816) 261. Tischbein said ‘Hamilton determined not to collect again, did so after an interval.’ (Schiller 1861, II: 169). The bulk were acquired in 1789/90 when many new tombs were found near Naples. 161   Sometimes referred to by other authors as Böettiger. 158 159 160

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The second half of the 18th century which later became the foundation for the Archaeological Museum in Florence. His early work classifying ancient sculpture gave him a system for isolating different periods and styles, and he used this method when making a chronology for ancient pottery found in Italy.

were entitled ‘Etruscan Vases’, leaving Lanzi to try to prove his dissertation from a disadvantageous standpoint. Lanzi traces the origins of the false nomenclature of vases found in Italy and said that this was born out of the ‘wrong writings’ of Annio Viterbese168 in the 15th century, and was compounded by the publication of Dempster, and that Buonarroti who wrote the new vase chapter and supplied the engravings for Dempster’s book, could not read Etruscan,169 had seen very few Greek antiquities, but large amounts of Etruscan material, so in good faith had presumed it all Etruscan, whereas Gori knew better, but refused to accept it. He then makes a long analogy of how, once moneta falsa gets into circulation, it is taken as standard currency.170

His first book, Saggio di lingua etrusca e di altre antiche d’Italia of 1789, covered a large variety of Etruscan antiquities, customs and language, which he thought to originate from Hebrew. He also published a huge work, Storia pittorica dell’Italia in 1796, covering all periods and areas of art in Italy. Lanzi realised there was a difference between Etruscan painting and Italiote vase-painting, and this led to the publication of a dissertation at Florence in 1806, under the significant title, Dei vasi antichi dipinti volgarmente chiamati etruschi, finally establishing the difference between Greek and Etruscan pottery.162

Lanzi complained that false names, once given, were accredited in every new book, consolidated and taken up by very important men in the 18th century.171 He claimed that clarity had been prejudiced because of study branching out down fruitless paths.172

Lanzi prefaces his work with a letter to the scholar Luigi Targioni of the Accademia Italiana, who, he said, has asked him to look into the origins of vases and other antiquities found in Italy. He said first, that the rules for describing scenes on vases have not yet been agreed on, and when repeating this complaint later he requires a new methodology for talking about vase painting with special attention to the system used by Visconti163 and Winckelmann.164

He describes the difference between vases found in Campania173 and those found in Etruscan tombs: Campanian vases are of characteristic Greek design, with strong, shiny varnish, the colour of the vase is of red earth, nicely patterned with meanders and floral decoration. The figures dressed with palliate ampio e ridondante.174 This differentiates them from the Etruscan vases which usually have figures roughly designed and a varnish which is not so shiny and chips more easily. The colour of Etruscan vases is a dead yellow, the flowers are less studied and the figures are only dressed to half-leg. The dress is so tight, as in their bronzes and is in the old national way of dressing.

He quotes Quintilian,165 who said that Zeuxis brought conformity to painting, and before him there were no rules, therefore vases can be dated before or after Zeuxis. Although Quintilian does not mention Hercules, Lanzi implies that Quintilian said that before Zeuxis Hercules was seen on vases in a tunic, but after Zeuxis he is always depicted in a skin. He said that before the buoni tempi (presumably the high classical art of the 5th century BC), figures ministering to the main figures on vases were suspended in air, ignoring perspective and standing on dots and sitting with no visible chair.166

These distinctive traits in some way can be seen in plates 3 & 4 of Passeri’s work. Baccanti do not have clothes, but in others are dressed in palliati.175

Lanzi regrets that many scenes are obscure and that, although on patere etrusche one finds names that help, these are not found on vases, and it will always be difficult for antiquarians to guess the subjects of scenes without symbols or writings to accompany them. He cites the illustrations in Passeri167 as examples when referring to vase painting. He said that these plates are well known to all students of vases. However, the majority of the vases illustrated in this work were South Italian, but the volumes

Lanzi also describes three curious vases he has been shown: a black-figure on white ground showing a seven stringed lyre and ‘baccanti’ depicted as women; a cup found in Padovano covered in silver varnish, resembling metal; and a vase from Este painted with stripes in yellow,

(1432-1502), a Tuscan who wrote an early guide to Cortona. He believed Cortona was built and named after Noah’s son Corito, 273 years after the flood. Many of the jingoistic myths about Etruria that led to 18th century etruscheria can be traced back to him through the shining reports of him in Giacomo Lauro’s Historia di Cortona of 1639, the first Tuscan travel guide.  169  A pointless remark, as no one could. 170   Later (1806:9) he gives the example of how, although Columbus discovered America, as Amerigo Vespucci wrote about it first it was named after him, despite Columbus calling it something different. 171   Lanzi (1806) 12-13. 172   Lanzi (1806) 9. 173 The majority seen by him in the Real Galleria Florence.  174   Pallium: cloaked in the Greek style, as in Comoedia Palliata, full and rich. 175   Lanzi (1806) 22-23. 168

  One can only judge how influential this book was by the contemporary authors who quote it. Certainly it is a very rare volume now (with only one public copy in London, and that not acquired by the British Library until the 20th century). Probably etruscophiles would have purposely ignored it. 163 Ennio Quirino Visconti (1751-1818), author of Le nozze di paride ed Elena: rappresentate in un vaso antico del museo del signor Tommaso Jenkins, Gentiluomo Inglese, Rome 1775.  164 Lanzi (1806) 9.  165 Institutio Oratoria XII.10.  166 This actually sounds more like 4th century BC r-f.  167 This must be Picturae Etruscorum Vasculis, Passeri’s only illustrated work.  162

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery purple and red, of beautiful shape, very light, found with pre-Roman coins and inscribed in Euganean script.176 Lanzi states, ‘The antique vases that are generally called Etruscan should not be described as such after examining the reasons that have recently been expounded in favour of such a nomenclature.’177 He makes a list of declarations on the mistakes that have been made by those attempting to classify the origins of Attic, Etruscan and South Italian vases: I.

Similar nomenclatures have dominated and still dominate in the field of monuments which are known to be Etruscan even if they are not.

III.

The same has happened especially in the field of vases which the early antiquarians called Etruscan from the start.

IV.

Vinckelmann178 in order to combat the false nomenclature of Etruscan vases, denies their origins as being Etruscan. Convinced he retires. Similarly sig d’Hancharville attributed to the Greeks the vases from Puglia and Campania.

V.

One names Etrurian places where they found painted vases and one should compare them with those dug up elsewhere.

VI.

From previous information that others have provided to do with the age of painted vases, one can reach conclusions. Name only one nation, since they cannot all be Etruscan or all Greek.

XI.

The coloured script on ancient vases is always Greek, never Etruscan. This is an error that has divided the partisans of the Etruscans such as Passeri.

XIII. Another characteristic which most favours Greek origins can be seen in the stories told on these vases. Later, in 1844, Charles Lenormant, in a recapitulation of the long debate on Etruscan origins, said: Notre but n’est point de retracer ici l’histoire complète des opinions auxquelles l’étude des vases peints a donné naissance, depuis l’étruscomanie des Dempster, des Gori, des Passeri, jusqu’aux travaux bien autrement satisfaisants d’un critique qui, quoique devenu Toscan par adoption, sut se mettre à l’abri des préjugés nationaux. L’ouvrage fort court de Lanzi, sur les Vases étrusque, a fait véritablement époque dans la suite de ces recherches; les érudits qui ont traité postérieurement la même question n’ont ajouté que peu de choses aux déductions ingénieuses, aux raisonnements solides qui distinguent l’opuscule de Lanzi.179 A black-figure amphora from Agrigento found around 1800, signed by Taleides as potter,180 was the first signed vase to be recognised, although vases had already been found with lettering that no one had realised were signatures. Lanzi used the Taleides vase to prove his thesis. Although actually publishing Dei vasi in 1806, Lanzi academically brings 18th century vase scholarship to a conclusion with his convincing denouncement of Etruscan origin for most red-figure vases.

VII. It is not enough to say the vases are Etruscan, that wide-spread dominion of the Tyrrhenians in Italy: nor the sculptural quality introduced from Euchira and Eugrammo into Tuscany, then widely circulated throughout the whole of Italy.

Lanzi died in Florence in 1810 and is buried next to Michelangelo in Santa Croce. He missed the Hyperboreans (for whom he had laid the foundation stones of vase origins), and the great finds at Vulci by nearly twenty years. The philologist Wilhelm Corssen referred to Lanzi as ‘The father of ancient Italian studies.’181

VIII. The fame of the Aretine vases is sufficient. IX.

Clues about the invention of this art favour the Greeks more than the Etruscans: the histories, the designs and the writing.

XII. Another indication that most favours the Greeks is the architecture or shape of the vases.

A false nomenclature cannot be amended without difficulties. Books about Etruria attributed to ancient times with mendacious frontispieces are proof of this.

II.

X.

No one verifies the assertions of sig. Buonnarroti that the vase paintings of Greek and Etruscan are one?

The 18th Century Much greater rhetoric and much less learning.182

  Lanzi (1806) 25-26. The Euganeans were an obscure tribe from the northern Veneto, first conquered by the Veneti and then the Romans. Little is known about ancient Euganei except for some pot sherds, and it is likely that Lanzi assumed it was ‘Euganean’ script because the vase was found in Este in the Veneto. Nor does he identify the ‘pre-Roman coins’. He does not state where he was shown these vases, and they are not now traceable. 177   Lanzi (1806) 11. 178  This spelling, and that of Buonarroti at IX, are Lanzi’s. 176

  Lenormant & Witte (1844-61) I: viij-ix.   Lanzi (1806) pl. 3. Once Cawdrey collection, now New York (47.11.5), ABV 174.1. 181   EHCA 659. 182   Haskell (1976) 38. 179 180

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The second half of the 18th century Dempster was the main protagonist in starting the passion for Etruscan art, and publishing in Latin183 gave his work a much wider audience than it would have had if he had written in English. Buonarroti’s plates firmly stamped the name Etruscan on to painted pottery made by Greek settlers. La Chausse and Montfaucon helped to bring ancient vases to the attention of the cognoscenti by disseminating their plate books. Montfaucon seems to have been the first to study the shapes of vases. The Academy of Cortona was the main power behind the Tuscan lobby that claimed all pre-Roman art for the Etruscans. The Tuscan Gori, the Romans Piranesi and Passeri and the Frenchman de Caylus all published high quality, sumptuously illustrated volumes which established these beliefs. The fashionable writer Goethe and the popular pottery factory of Wedgwood propagated the established Etruscan origin of Italiote vases. The pro-Greek camp had two branches: the South Italian savants such as Martolli, Mazzochi, di Blasi and especially Paoli, who were as political in their motives as the Tuscans and wanted to prove a Magna Graecian origin for painted pottery. They made one significant step forward by recognising the significance of Greek inscriptions on vases. The other branch was in northern Europe: Winckelmann established the Greek influence on most ancient art found in Italy. And Hamilton unconsciously proliferated this idea by having a taste for the more finely painted Greek ‘Nolan’ vases and publishing his collection in his highly popular volumes, with far reaching influence. The interpretation of iconography in the 18th and early 19th centuries often involved scholars who tried to decipher the scenes on vases by comparing them to ancient Italian texts, mainly Latin authors, particularly Ovid. Vase scenes that could not be associated with any known ancient text were thought to display images of sinister arcane religious rituals such as human sacrifice.

183

The Lingua Franca of academia since the dark ages. 

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Chapter III The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s

Early discoveries in Greece

Greek antiquities to the British Museum and later found employment there in the coin department. In 1813 he found quantities of black- and red-figure pottery (though mainly fragmented) while excavating in Athens. The similarity with pottery from South Italy was immediately apparent, although at first his examples were disputed. The only record of Thomas Burgon publishing his own work is a paper on Geometric pottery in Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, 1847.9 By default these explorers in Greece had advanced the study of vases in Italy by helping to confirm the Greek connection.

In the early 19th century, pottery from mainland Greece became more accessible for study and therefore the line between the study of South Italian and Greek vases in general became more blurred.1 In 1791 three English travellers had returned from the island of Melos with a small quantity of red-figure vases they had found in a tomb. These they gave to Hamilton who saw that one had a design almost identical to a vase in his second collection, showing a naked man handing a shield (?) to two robed men. These two vase-paintings were illustrated together in Hamilton’s second collection.2 An indisputable connection between South Italian and Greek pottery was now established.3

However, as in the habit of calling Greek gods by the names of their Roman counterparts, English connoisseurs and dilettanti, although they were fully aware that these vases were of Greek origin, continued to hold onto the tradition of calling them all ‘Etruscan’. In an article in the monthly journal Ackermann’s Repository of Arts for October 1810, the anonymous contributor uses the title ‘Observations on Etruscan Vases’. Articles in this journal are usually anonymous and this writer may well be a known vase scholar, as he appears to be well read in the subject (referring to Passeri, Mazochi [sic], Mastrilli, Vivenzio), although his interpretations of vases are quaint and misguided. He said:

Two travellers who excavated in Greece should be briefly mentioned here. Edward Dodwell4 (1767-1832) made a collection of Greek vases while travelling in Greece between 1801 and 1806. He wrote extensively on Greek vases in his A classical and topographical tour through Greece, published in London in 1819.5 He was later quoted as dating (what appears to be from the vignette in the text) an MPC dish to 700 BC.6 This was very intuitive for the 1800s, when dating had not yet been established. He used as a foundation knowledge already acquired from the study of South Italian pottery to make assumptions about the wares turning up in Attica. Dodwell’s collection of 143 vases and 115 bronzes was catalogued by Braun and sold to the Munich Glyptothek in 1837.

Though much has been written on Etruscan vases, the ablest antiquaries do not appear to have discovered all the uses to which they were applied. There is one that has escaped their most laborious researches, and yet bears the stamp of that delicacy of sentiment, and that love of the fine arts, which distinguished the ancient Greeks. Those elegant vases, of which Samos, Corinth, and Sicyon had such flourishing manufactories, and which were equally numerous in the wealthiest cities of Italy and of Grecia Magna, were not employed solely to adorn their apartments. It was not merely to gratify the caprice of fashion, that the painter and sculptor racked their invention, to vary their shape and ornaments; these vases were to the Greeks, what flowers still are to the people of the East, a medium of amorous correspondence. When a youth wished to make a disclosure of his flame to the object that had inspired it, one of these vases was purchased, the design of which revealed what he wanted courage to

Thomas Burgon7 (1787-1858) was a traveller, adventurer and archaeologist who had a thriving business as a Turkey Merchant8 operating out of Smyrna. After his business collapsed in the 1840s he sold his large collection of   For the rediscovery of Greece see Tsigakou (1981).  Tischbein (1791-5) ii, pls. 61-62. Both vases now lost, possibly on HMS Colossus, Burn (1997) 250. 3  Athough Hamilton still thought that one had been made in Greece and the other in S.I. to a common design, Tischbein (1791-5) ii, 96. 4   DNB. 5   Republished in German at Meiningen in 1821. 6  Wordsworth (1859) 34. 7   Mentioned in his son John William Burgon’s entry in DNB. His son (Dean of Chichester, who penned the lines ‘A rose-red city, half as old as Time’) was also an archaeologist and vase collector who recorded his father’s discovery of pottery in Greece in the introduction to his book on panathenaic vases, Burgon (1833) 1. 8  This was the accepted term of the period for a European merchant dealing out of the Levant. 1 2

 Thomas Burgon returned to England, later working at, and donating his collection to, The British Museum. 9

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s express; and, on the first favourable opportunity, this present supplied the place of a declaration of love.

Keats then considers the iconography of the many undeciphered images on the vases:

One [vase] engraved by Passeri may be instanced, which is otherwise inexplicable. On one side appears a young man in the dress of a slave, presenting three apples to a girl looking out of a window … on the other side, the girl, with the apples in her hand, stands before the young man, who, in an humble and suppliant posture, is relating his tender tale. If the signification of these two groupes were not sufficiently clear, we might add, that apples of every kind were sacred to Venus. Mazochi has given us a plate of a vase in the collection of Mastrilli, at Naples, where writing is called in to the assistance of allegory. We there see a winged genius, with a long flowered robe, pouring a libation on the flame of a little altar, over which is written, in ancient Greek letters, “Callicles is beautiful.” A more gallant address could not be put to a billet doux. In the rich collection of the Abbé Vivenzio, at Nola, we find a vase of extreme elegance, with the inscription: “To the beautiful Clymene.” What modern beauty can flatter herself with equal celebrity from the most passionate billet doux?10

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrils? What wild ecstacy? He continues with ‘green altar’, ‘mysterious priest’ and a ‘garland drest heifer lowing at the skies’. Keats researchers have sought in vain to find the identity of the vase or vases he refers to. He describes far too many images for it to be the body of any one vase, and this must be based on an overall impression of scenes on classical vases, whether Greek pottery or Roman marble, that Keats had seen in the British Museum or in Hamilton’s volumes. James Dickie, in his ‘The Grecian Urn: an Archaeological Approach’, speaks of the creative processes of Keats’ mind: In particular, his habit of synthesizing an image out of a blurred agglomeration of impressions received from disparate sources: for the sensuous basis of his art depended largely on visual experiences of an uncommon, indeed almost pathological intensity.14

The writer wrongly assumes that the vase was painted with a love scene specifically to be given as a love token, and that the kalos name on the vase is the name of the girl the vase was supposedly presented to. In so doing, he wilfully or naively ignores the idea of the admiration of a man for a boy in classical Greece, and the masculine endings of Callicles kalos, and the tradition that kalos names were usually addressed to boys.11

It is generally accepted now that Keats was referring to a marble urn: he refers to ‘Marbled men and maidens overwrought’, also the description of the scene as a ‘Cold Pastoral’15 suggests the cold of marble,16 although this is countermanded by Keats calling the scene ‘For ever warm’.17 But surely it was the arrival of Hamilton’s vases at the British Museum in the 1770s that gave birth to the original concept of the ‘Etruscan’ or ‘Grecian Urn’ in the public imagination. Furthermore, the huge marble urns which were being brought back by grand-tourists could be seen from Piranesi’s popular and widely known publications, Vasi and Antichità Romane,18 to be very much ‘Roman’, whereas Keats uses the phrase ‘Attic shape’ in the first line of the last stanza.

Vases and the Creative Imagination Vase collecting had an impact not only on scholarship, but also on the creative imagination. Throughout the 18th century, Rome had been the centre of the discovery of the classical world. Now, especially in England, with the setting up of the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum, Greece had become the focus of attention. Whereas Greek vases had been called Etruscan, now this was being reversed and Keats was calling what was probably his imagination of an amalgam of the scenes from several Roman stone urns, a Grecian Urn.12 John Keats (17951821) wrote his Horatian Ode on a Grecian Urn in May 1819.13 The poem gives a good indication of the reception of ancient vases in the early 19th century, and explores a subject that was intriguing the vase scholars of the period. After making a comment at the beginning of the poem on the millennia the vases had remained unfound:

Keats did not leave England until he went to Rome in 1820, a few months before his death. The poem must, therefore, have been written about vases he saw in England, either at the British Museum, or in Hamilton’s volumes of Greek vases, or Piranesi’s etchings of Roman stone urns. Keats’ poem catches all the atmosphere of the new fascination   Dickie (1969) 96.   Stanza 5, line 5. 16  Although no Greek marble urn matching Keats’ description of the scene is known, a good candidate for this could be Hamilton’s famous stone ‘Warwick Vase’, imported from Italy and on show in London as well as being illustrated in Piranesi’s Vasi (1778), two large folios similar in popularity to Hamilton’s Vases, but illustrating stone urns excavated in Rome. Dickie has discovered a marble urn in Naples Museum matching Keats’ description of an urn in another Keats poem, Ode on Indolence, which Keats never saw in the flesh, but in Piranesi’s Vasi, vol. I, plate 33. Dickie insists that Keats was intrigued with marble urns, not Greek vases. 17   Stanza 3, line 6. 18   Piranesi (1756), four folios similar to Vasi, illustrating ancient ruins and general spolia in Rome. 14 15

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time

 Anonymous (1810) 210.  Although there were rare kale names, see Robinson & Fluck (1937). 12   For examinations of this poem see Wasserman (1953), Keesey (1994). 13   Published in his collection of poems Lamia in 1820. 10 11

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery and this raised suspicions:22 a cow between columns, in front of an amphitheatre; women alone on a stage (without a phlyax) pointing at each other; and a youth appearing out of rocks above waves, alongside him the letters ‘Aga’ and a winged snake, and in the sky Hermes’ caduceus. The theatre scene was so striking that it was used to illustrate the Theatre of Dionysos in The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography 1854.

with specifically Greek, rather than Roman antiquity, from Thomas Hope’s house to Gillray’s cartoons, and continued later into the century with Lord Leighton’s painting Captive Andromache which portrayed actual Greek vases from the British Museum.19 Millin 1808 Aubin Louis Millin20 (1759-1818), the French historian and Curator of the Cabinet des Médailles, published Peintures de vases antiques, vulgairement appelés étrusques in 1808, only two years after Lanzi, but fails to mention him. Instead, he returns to the disputes and mistakes of Buonarroti, Gori, Passeri and Winckelmann, which were already forty to fifty years old. He said:

Like the majority of illustrated vase books, Millin’s work is a vehicle for the plates, and vase scholarship is only discussed in the introduction, the remainder of the book being a straight forward description of the vases. Millin’s introduction is headed by a vignette line engraving of two tombs showing the bodies and the lay-out of the vases. He does not attempt to name vase shapes, or the possible uses of vases. He concentrates on scenes, their meanings and the identification of the figures in them.

Les auteurs que je viens de citer regardoient les vases peints comme étrusques, et pensoient pouvoir y trouver des détails propres à expliquer les moeurs, les usages, et même l’histoire de l’ancienne Etrurie.

In 1810-12, Theodor Creuzer advanced the study of vase iconography with his new interpretations in Symbolik und Mythologie der alten völker, besonders der Griechen.23

Winkelmann [sic] fut le premier à reconnoître que ce genre de monuments n’étoit pas particulier aux Etrusques; la fausse dénomination qu’on leur avoit donnée venoit, disoit-il, de ce qu’on avoit suivi, sans examen, les idées de Bounarroti et de Gori, qui avoient les premiers parlé de ces vases: ces toscans avoient facilement adopté une opinion qui leur paroissoit donner plus l’illustration à leur pays. Malgré l’opposition de Winkelmann, ces vases conservèrent le nom de vases étrusques …

Millingen The Englishman James Millingen24 (1774-1845), a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and of L’Académie Archéologique de Rome, obtained a post in the French Mint in Paris. Just five years after Millin’s poor plates, he published closely authentic representations of vases25 in Peintures antiques et inédites de vases grecs tirées de diverses collections in Rome in 1813. He read Lanzi, whom he called the Savant Abbé, and said ‘cet ouvrage rempli d’érudition, et qui contient des vuës neuves et ingénieuses, est digne de la grande réputation de son auteur’.26 He had firmly accepted that vases found in South Italy were of Greek origin, and heads his introduction to the plates ‘Les vases de terre appeles généralement, mais improprement, Etrusques.’ He said:

Passeri, qui vint aprés, ne voulut point y renoncer; mais Hamilton en publiant sa seconde collection, la fit précéder d’un discours dans lequel il établit que ces peintures sont l’ouvrage des Grecs, opinion qui a été adoptée par M. Boettiger, et que j’ai aussi suivie en expliquant plusieurs vases dans mon recueil de monuments inédits, recueil qui a précédé la publication de celui dont M. Dubois Maisonneuve est éditeur.21

Des sujets semblables ne se voyent guéres que sur des vases de la décadence de l’Art, et que l’on découvre dans la partie de l’Italie occupée autrefois par les Lucaniens, les bruttiens, et les Samnites; où les opinions et les usages Grecs étoient corrompus par le mélange avec ceux de ces peuples babares.27

Possibly Millin had written his treatise before Lanzi made his discoveries public, and took two or more years to get published. Or possibly, Lanzi’s work had remained local to Florence and had not yet reached a wider readership in the rest of Europe. Millin’s plates are mediocre. Beazley complains in ARV2 1024,2 that it is impossible to attribute a lost vase because Millin’s reproduction is so bad. Millin also published (probably unknowingly) what is now thought to have been a non-existent vase from forged drawings. A Sicilian named Scrofani gave (or probably sold) Millin three drawings supposedly taken from a Greek vase found at Aulis and in a private collection. Millin had these drawings engraved and published the vase. All three pictures were very unusual

Millingen got his basic method of classification from Winckelmann. His dating is in three periods: (1) 700-450 BC; (2) from Pheidias to the second Punic War; and finally (3) from there until the end of the Republic. He railed strongly against the habit of repainting when restoring or changing the pictures by bowdlerising the genitalia or   See Reinach (1891) Millin plates II: 55 & 56.   Confusingly, there is a Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker: besonders der Griechen, im Auszuge by G.F. Greuzer and G.H. Moser, Leipzig, 1822. 24   DNB 25   Cook (1972) 279, declares they are the ‘First honest reproductions.’ 26   Millingen (1813) 1, n.1. 27   Millingen (1813) vi. 22 23

 Although some scenes were represented on the wrong shaped vase, see Jenkins (1983) 597-605. 20   DBF. 21   Millin (1808) III-V. 19

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s by making the pictures more interesting, as proposed by d’Hancarville:

short introduction followed by a description of the plates (the main reason for the volume), but illustrating a series of different vases. Whereas the 1813 plates had been copper line engravings, larger, more painstaking and better quality, these 1822 illustrations were easier to produce and more eye-catching colour lithographs in ochre, black and highlighted white.

At my request he28 has drawn the figures more correctly than they are drawn in the Ancient painting. He would have done a great deal more had I not asked him to adhere as closely as possible to the Original Compositions.29

He said that during the ten years following Peintures, ‘By farther experience acquired’ visiting collections and by the numerous discoveries in Italy and Greece, it had become clear that ‘Fictile Vases’ were the most important of all classes of ancient monuments to the advancement of archaeology:

Millingen recommended the cleaning of vases with alcohol to remove overpainting by those who had tried to make the scenes more interesting, or through prudishness. Many of the vases in Peintures were from his own collection, (as well as some from the Vatican and the collection of Durand) but, unlike Hamilton and Denon, he seems to have had no ulterior motive to sell.

Hence, the advantage of vases which are original productions of Greek art, whereas the far greater number of the monuments which have reached us, belong to the imperial times of Rome; and though the latter generally present the same mythological or heroic subjects as the former, yet, owing to the alteration produced by time in manners and opinions, they differ from one another in character as much as the Achilles of Statius differs from the Achilles of Homer.32

On shape, rather than believing in ritualistic forms or copying from nature, Millingen took the view that vases developed from handling and practical use. Also, in mentioning Alexander, he gets reasonably close to an accurate date for the demise of red-figure: Le besoin de se pourvoir de vases nécessaires aux divers usages de la vie, avoit appris aux hommes à manier l’argile, matière autant recommandable par la facilité de se la procurer que par celle de la mettre en oeuvre … que les vases de terre furent généralement en usage parmi les Grecs, jusqu’au temps d’Alexandre.30

Millingen came to believe that vase-paintings were taken from paintings, and that these paintings must have been of even finer workmanship: for it could not be expected that artists of the first order should have been employed in such designs [as vasepainting], but gives us the greatest insight into the state of painting when it flourished in the schools of Athens and Sicyon.33

In Rome in 1817, in partnership with the vase collector Le Chevalier Giovanni de Rossi,31 Millingen published (for a fee) Sir John Coghill’s vase collection. This seems to have been a straight commercial proposition on Coghill’s part, as the vases were sold soon after to the British Museum. This enterprise was doubly rewarding as not only was it a vehicle for selling the vases, but the volumes were also best sellers, produced as objets d’art in their own right, with a choice of fine bindings, large folio sized, using thick wove paper printed with wide-spaced lettering recording the congratulatory correspondence between de Rossi and Millingen. However, these letters in the form of an introduction repeated the same facts rendered in earlier works and were of little use to the advancement of vase scholarship.

Millingen refers to those who still bestow the name of Etruscan on vases, showing that this idea was still in existence in 1822. He said that this erroneous denomination is particularly dangerous, as it is not only prejudicial to the advancement of science, but also the study of Etruscology, as it has induced many of the learned to consider hopeless any attempt to explain real Etruscan artifacts. He feared that the new error was to consider all vases to have been made for the mystic ceremonies of Ceres and Bacchus. To remove this opinion he gives the reasons why it is incorrect: 1. Dionysus or Bacchus was originally a local divinity of Thebes; 2. The most ancient vases do not have ‘Dionysiacal’ scenes, but warriors, races and hunts; 3. The ceremonies and rites of Eleusis were performed in the greatest secrecy and representations of them on works of art exposed to profane eyes would have been deemed highly impious.

In 1822 Millingen published Painted Greek Vases from Collections in Various Countries, Principally in Great Britain. This was similar in format to Peintures of 1813: a   Laurent Pécheux (1740-1821), the French painter and engraver, pupil and friend of Rafael Mengs. D’Hancarville said, ‘Monsieur Pécheux, one of the best Painters at present, after having well examined some of these vases, found that those who made them, must have had much greater knowledge than their Works seem to shew, as in truth the extreme difficulty in the execution prevented their shewing what the[y] could have done, and that it must have been a very great Draughtsman to execute in this manner even an incorrect drawing’ (1766-7) II: 150. The plates for the 4th volume of Hamilton’s first vase collection are the most aesthetically pleasing, but the least authentic. 29   D’Hancarville (1766-7) II: 168. 30   Millingen (1813) i. 31   1754-1827, the former owner of Coghill’s vase collection. 28

  Millingen (1822) ii.   Millingen (1822) iv.

32 33

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 24 Dubois Maisonneuve, plate from Introduction a l’Etude des Vases, 1817 Dubois Maisonneuve

part was priced at 18 francs, or coloured at 45 francs, while a complete set of coloured parts was priced at 150 francs (this must have dissuaded the purchase of single prints).

In 1817 a volume was published whose text did not in any way advance the study of black- and red-figure vases but whose illustrations were the finest and most accurate in line and colour. Anton Dubois de Maisonneuve’s Introduction à l’étude des vases antiques d’argile peints, vulgairement appelés Étrusques: accompagnée d’une collection des plus belles formes, ornées de leurs peintures suivie de planches la plupart inédites pour servir de supplément aux différents recueils de ces monuments illustrated the finest vases from the collections of Hamilton, Pourtalès, Tischbein, Lamberg and others. It was issued in seventeen parts, either coloured or uncoloured. A single uncoloured

The illustration of figured vases had always presented a challenge to illustrators and engravers, partly because of the problem of transcribing images from a curved and convex surface to a plane, but also because of difficulties of reproducing the tones of Greek vase colouration. These challenges were finally mastered here. The sharply defined juxtaposition of red and black characteristic of Greek vases could not be reproduced convincingly and consistently with conventional hand-colouring, and so pochoir stencils were used on these plates when applying the fields of

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s colours to give a remarkably sharp boundary to each image. The result was spectacular and highly individual [fig.24], and set a standard of colour illustration not to be matched until the development of chromolithography in the later nineteenth century. Finally, scholars were able to study vases in accurate detail that were not always available for public scrutiny.34

won him an European renown. He was not only an author; he was also the painter, the publisher, and even the illustrator of his own works. It may not be generally known that he drew with his own hand the numerous plates of all the voluminous works he has given to the world; and to insure accuracy, had recourse to a most tedious process, which doubled his labour. In default of a camera-obscura, or lucida,36 he traced every object on an upright plane of glass, set between it and his eye, and then retraced his drawing on paper. His illustrations have thus the merit of accuracy, which in the works of some Italian antiquities is wanting, where it is essential.

Inghirami 1824 The Cavalier Francesco Inghirami (1772-1846) was a Tuscan archaeologist and engineer who lived in the ancient Etruscan town of Fiesole (Faesulae), with its many antiquarian sites. He wrote six volumes entitled Monumenti Etruschi o di Etrusco Nome illustrated by seventy plates of vases. Although by its publication in 1824 most scholars now accepted that black- and redfigured vases were of Greek origin,35 some authors still doggedly persisted in publishing these vases in books on Etruscan art. And, although vases were now available from Greece, Inghirami still published only vases found in Italy to further his beliefs.

Inghirami it was who, with Micali,37 was instrumental in bringing the almost obsolete subject of Etruscan antiquities before the world. They took the dusty topic from the shelf, where since the days of Dempster, Gori, Passeri, and Lanzi it had lain; and held it up to public view.38 Those named by Dennis (except Lanzi) had been Etruscophiles of the great Etruscheria era of the first half of the 18th century and there had been several generations gap before Inghirami published, so perhaps Dennis’ sobriquet of ‘Patriarch of Etruscan antiquities’ would be more deserving to one of the old guard.

However, his stubborn etruscophilia aside, Inghirami uses a much more scientific approach to other aspects of vase study. He considers the purpose of the vases rather than just their artistic merit. Discussing a black-figure lekythos, he describes the position of each vase in the tomb where it was found:

James Christie

Secondo il fin qui detto nulla osterebbe a sospettare che tutta la rappresentanza fosse animastica, e percio bene adattata ad ornare un vasetto sepolto con un cadavere.

James Christie39 (1773-1831), son of, and successor to, the famous auctioneer, was introduced to Greek vases by Charles Townley and became a great enthusiast. Although he had been arranging auctions of private collections for sale to invited bidders, the first big publicly advertised auctions of vases that could be entered by any vendor took place at Christie’s in June 1819 and June 1820.

This new line of study was completely ignored five years later at Vulci where the huge numbers of vases being found were moved en masse to tents set up as central holding and clearing bases, without any record of exactly which tomb they came from, the context, or the bodies they accompanied.

In 1806 Christie privately printed A Disquisition Upon Etruscan Vases, displaying their probable connection with the shows at Eleusis, and the Chinese festival of lanterns, with explanations of a few of the principle allegories depicted upon them,40 in which he attempted to show that vases deposited in tombs (mostly in Southern Italy) were specially produced and painted for use in the tombs by those initiated into these mysteries. His discourse gives an interesting insight into the state of post-Lanzi South Italian vase scholarship. He makes some mistakes such as ‘Punic

Inghirami published a further four volumes on vases, Pitture di Vasi Fittili, between 1832 and 1839. These were more concerned with portraying iconography than pursuing Etruscan origins, although he still does not concede this point. The English traveller, George Dennis, met Inghirami in the 1840s and gave this impression of the man he called ‘The patriarch of Etruscan antiquities’:

 The Camera Lucida, invented by William Hyde Wollaston in 1807, was a small and portable optical instrument similar to the much larger Camera Obscura. It consisted of a four-sided prism in a box, and was used by draughtsmen to get the perspective outline of objects before the invention of photography. 37   Giuseppe Micali (1769-1844), author of Storia degli antichi popoli italiani (1836-7), Etruscan scholar who had the Etruscan b-f Micali Painter named after him. 38   Dennis (1848) ii: 133-4. 39   DNB. 40   Republished in 1825 as Disquisitions upon the Painted Greek Vases, and their probable connection with the Shows of the Eleusinian and other Mysteries. 36

One of the attractions of Fiesole was, till of late, La Badia, a quaint old abbey at the foot of the hill, long the residence of the Cavalier Francesco Inghirami, whose profound learning and untiring research had   Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books kindly made this very rare volume available for viewing (even the British Library do not have a copy of the colour version) and gave advice and expertise. 35  Albeit, they were yet to discover that, after all the wrangling, some vases actually were Etruscan. 34

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Ware’,41 but attempts to look in the right places for clues and makes a particularly logical attempt at categorising South Italian vase shapes.

According to this mode of arrangement, I shall comprise the whole under the four following Classes:I. II. III. IV.

He said: This custom of depositing vases in sepulchres is supposed to have been introduced into Sicily and Magna Graecia by the early colonists from Greece proper, and into Etruria, by emigrants from the same country. The term Etruscan, indeed applied to these vases, seems to be now generally abandoned.42

The Purple-figured, The Black-figured, The Illumined, and The Plain.47

He describes the purple-figured vases as being on pale clay and frequently exhibiting lions and stags in alternate order, or ‘armed figures with their circular shields.’ This is a passable description of Corinthian and ‘purple’ and ‘lion’ would seem to eliminate most other types of vase, except possibly Etrusco-Corinthian. He also said that there is a similar vase in the collection of Thomas Hope Esq. He places these purple vases ‘As the earliest in point of antiquity, and of Carthaginian manufacture’. He refers to purple ware as ‘Punic Ware’ and quotes six vases illustrated in d’Hancarville that clearly show that they are in fact Corinthian pots.48

He quotes Bossi43 as claiming first manufacture of these vessels for the Tuscans: ‘Di quest arte, siccomedi molte altre, furono maestri gli Etruschi ai Romani, e fors,’ anche ai Greci, Istoria d’Italia, vol I p.286.’ Christie also quotes Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae where a young man jeers at a crone: Y.M.

‘But you wretch, I am afraid of that lover of yours.’ C. ‘What lover?’ Y.M. ‘Why, of him, the first of artists.’ C. ‘Who is he?’ Y.M. ‘He who paints the lecythi for the dead.’44 Christie said:

Christie said, ‘Attempts to illustrate history by paintings upon Greek pottery will generally be labour misapplied’; however, he goes on to say, ‘The grim military characters represented on them remind us of “The bearded-spearand-trumpet-men” of Aeschylus (Aristophanes Ranae v. 997), and cannot be much later than his time.’ 49 This is an early attempt to date vases, although getting their topographical origin quite wrong. Another strange idea he has is that ‘The devises on Apulian vases derive from Sparta and Phoenicia’, presumably because the Apulian coast is on a roughly straight route from these countries. As there seems to be no record of Laconian (‘Spartan’) pottery being isolated and positively identified by the 1820s, and Phoenician pottery being largely linear-painted utility ware, Christie must also have been erroneously identifying other designs as coming from these areas.50 ‘Campanulate’ vases, he said:

lecythus denoted both a lamp and an oil vase for filling it; and as I have noticed the custom of placing a lamp in the tomb near the head of the deceased, the several vases surrounding the body, if viewed as so many emblematical reservoirs of oil for keeping alive that lamp, might very well imply the hope that the flame of life would be rekindled in a future state.45 Christie believed the Kalos inscription was a certificate of initiation to the Eleusinian Mysteries, he said: ‘I believe that the paintings on these fictilia represented the scenery of the Eleusinian shows, but that the certificate of initiation to them was expressed on these memorials; as in the words Kalos or Kaloc inscribed in transparent characters on the vases of Nola.’46

Which are the most numerous of the illumined class, have almost invariably an olive wreath encompassing the vessel, immediately under the lip [and] at the bottom of the bowl of these vases is a waved line to represent water, or the Maeander which is the known substitute for it. Between the two is the allegorical painting. Thus by the operation of spirit upon water, all those scenes of life and action were supposed to be produced, which are intended to be exemplified in these paintings.51

Christie categorizes the Greek painted pottery found in the tombs of Magna Graecia in two ways: dating them by colour; and distinguishing them by shape. For dating by colour he said:

Christie must be referring to kraters, as a review of Trendall’s Campanian plates shows that lip designs on other Campanian shapes are varied but seldom of olive

  See infra p.93.   Christie (1825) 3. 43   Count Luigi Bossi (1758-1835) Milanese historian, author of the 19 volume Della Istoria d’Italia antica e moderna (1819-23). 44   Christie (1825) 5. Christie said Eccl. 986-8 (Eccl. 992-6 in modern editions). Christie takes his translation from Wilcocks Roman conversations vol.I: LXV. Kurtz (1975) 73 suggests this passage in Aristophanes could equally be referring to stone lekythoi used as grave markers. 45   Christie (1825) 5-6. 46   Christie (1825) 7. 41 42

  Christie (1825) 120.   D’Hancarville (1767) vol. I, plates 85, 113, 46, vol.II pl. 104, 117, vol. IV pl. 99. 49   Christie (1825) 11-12, this is v.966 in modern editions of The Frogs, where Aristophanes refers to an un-named play by Aeschylus, now lost. 50  Albeit there is a close similarity between 6th century Laconian b-f and Etruscan b-f, e.g. the Eyre Painter and the Rider Painter: see Williams (1999) 67 for a good illustrative example. 51   Christie (1825) 23. 47 48

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s

Figure 25 James Christie, engraving of plant heads showing the origin of vase shapes

wreaths. By ‘Maeander’ he is more likely to mean what is now generally called hook-spiral, which is on rather more than two thirds of Campanian vases and more readily suggests waved lines or water. Christie may have referred to what we now call meander as ‘Greek key.’

Nelumbio-ides, Nupharo-ides.52

Loto-ides,

Nymphaeo-ides,

and

He goes on to give examples including: Certain Campanian vases may be termed urceolate, or of bottle shape; globular at the bottom, then gradually lessening in the neck, and as gradually expanding again at the wide reflected lip. This is precisely the form of the capsule of the Nuphar lutea of Greece and Britain.53

The Shapes of Vases Although this section starts in chronological sequence with the work so far, it will cover the naming of vase shapes up to the 20th century, then return to its chronological order for the next section.

He illustrates the beginning of section I of his appendix with a vignette of the four Egyptian plant heads which he believes the main types of vase shapes represent [fig.25]. Of the plants from left to right of the drawing, I. presumably is represented by kraters; II. & III. are in the wrong order, because II is oblate and III is oblong. Albeit, the oblate shape must represent nestorides, and the oblong shape a range of vases such as amphorae, hydriai, stamnoi, loutrophoroi; IV. would be lekythoi, pelikae and oinochoai.

Christie states: Athenaeus mentions a cup termed a ciborion which derives its shape and name from the fruit of the nelumbium. After much attentive consideration of the subject, I have been led to conclude that all the larger vases of the ancients, or with very few exceptions, have been fashioned after the capsules of certain plants of the water-lily kind: either

It seems unlikely that no one had tried to compare Athenaeus’ long list of drinking cup names (which takes up most of book XI of the Deipnosophistae)54 with cups that had now been found in great quantity in southern Italy. Perhaps no one felt sufficiently confident to commit themselves from Athenaeus’ elusive descriptions. Or, the

I. Of the Nelumbium of Egypt, approaching to a conical form; or II. Of the Nymphaea Lotus of Egypt, of oblong spheroidal shape; or III. Of the Nymphaea alba of Greece, oblate spheroidal; or IV. Of the Nuphar lutea of Greece, of which the capsule is urceolate. V. Thus, the genera of vases may be expressed by the epithets,-

  Christie (1825) 121.   Christie (1825) 123. 54   Sparkes & Talcott, in their section on vase shapes in Agora XII (1970) 4, criticise Athenaeus’ references to vase shapes as, ‘ … untidy and defective collections of references to earlier literature’. 52 53

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 26 Piranesi, juxtaposition of shells and vases, 1769

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s widespread belief in the previous 100 years that the cups found in Magna Graecia were Etruscan had precluded comparison with Attic wares referred to by Athenaeus.

look like three cockleshells. Piranesi’s juxtapositions are unconvincing. However, as late as the 1960s, the women of Aquila in Southern Italy still carried large two-handled copper waterpots known as conche to and from the local wells and fountains.59

D’Hancarville categorised the different vase shapes into groups:

Also, Laurent Pécheux’s painting ‘The cabinet of the Marchesa Boccapaduli Gentile’, 1777 (Private Collection),60 shows a curio-stand where shells and vases are juxtaposed, and the antiquarian James Byres saw a similar display in the cabinet of Ignazio, Prince of Biscari in Catania, in 1766. He commented:

We shall divide them in different classes, which may serve at the same time for, their arrangement in cabinets, Sacred things, Publick ceremonies and Domestick uses, we imagine, there are none, but what are included in one or other of these three Divisions.55 There was a tradition that started in the mid-eighteenth century of trying to compare vase shapes to natural objects rather than to accept that they had developed from practical use. In his interior design folio Manners of ornamenting chimneys of 1769, Piranesi intimates that he independently had the revelation that the ancient potters got their inspiration from shells, although shells and vases were already being arranged together before this date.56 He produced two engravings for Manners comparing the forms of vases to sea-shells [fig.26]. He said,

… an excellent collection of Etruscan vases - some very ancient - found at Camarina, some with Etruscan, some with Egyptian and some with Greek figures on them, and with Greek and Etruscan inscriptions, which I think shows that these nations had great communication together and borrowed their arts from one another; he has likewise a considerable collection of natural history, particularly corals, sea plants, petrifications and shells.61 The Dowager Duchess of Portland, refered to by Horace Walpole as ‘Perfectly sober and intoxicated only by empty vases’, formed a cabinet of curiosities at Bulstrode including exotic sea-shells, fossils, coral, medals and Etruscan vases all juxtaposed with butterfly cases and heraldic bindings. To this she finally added the Portland Vase.

I had often put my imagination to the stretch to find out what there is in nature which could furnish them with such a variety of ideas and forms, when called on to see a collection of shells and other testaceous productions both marine and fossil, made by the late monsignor Baldani, I had scarcely cast my eye upon them, when I thought I perceived in these works of nature all the forms, the modifications, and I will venture to say, even the pictoresc [sic] ornaments,which I had seen on the Hetruscan vases. And I was more confirmed in this opinion, when, after my return home I had taken up the collection of shells published by Nicolas Gaultiere. I compared with them the forms, manner, and the ornaments of the vases: and behold! This is, said I to myself, the mine from whence the Tuscans drew so many different forms of vases: this is the secret by which they formed so great and surprising a variety of them. Whoever shall make the same comparison, and shall confront the Hetruscan vases of the Vatican, of the Roman college, and of many other museums with the collections of Gesner, of Johnston, of Rondelet, Aldrovandi, Bonanni, Nicolai, and others, will not, I am sure, doubt of the truth of my observation.57

Henry Moses, in his A Collection of Vases (1814), compared the shapes of vase-handles to animate objects, saying: Vases differ exceedingly in their forms, which are universally full of grace. They vary too from each other in the number, in the position, and in the shape of the handles, which are in general two, never exceeding three, and are sometimes only one. The devices of the handles are often taken from the figure of a serpent, a branch of a tree, a swan’s neck, the head of a faun, a satyr, or a ram &c. as the fancy of the artist suggests.62 No one, it seems, in this long, fanciful and fruitless detour had heeded d’Hancarville in one of his rare sensible observations: The different uses for which Vases were design’d produced that variety in the Shapes, they have given them: from whence it must be concluded, that, it is only in there end or purpose itself, that we must seek after the reason of these differences.63

But the comparison does not stand up to scrutiny: a perusal of Richter & Milne (1935) shows that no vase resembles a shell in shape, unless one stretches the imagination to the volutes on kraters looking like ammonites, or includes a rare vase like the c. 500 BC type II aryballos attributed to Phintias as potter58 [fig.27] which is actually moulded to   D’Hancarville (1767) I. 66.  The French term Rococo, first used in the reign of Louis XV (1715-74) is derived from rocaille, rock, and coquille, shell, motifs prominent in 18th century decoration. 57   Piranesi (1769) 18-19. 58   New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 23.160.33, ARV2 25.1, Richter

& Milne (1935) fig. 108. 59   Morton (1969) 14. 60   Poor illustration in Apollo 117 (1983) 385. 61   Page 54 of Byres MS published in Ridgway (1989) 223. 62   Moses (1814) 7-8. 63   D’Hancarville (1767) II: 60.

55 56

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery

Figure 27 Type II aryballos in the form of shells, c.500 BC

The Naming of Shapes64

He urges the need for an international agreement on vase names:

The object divested of its function65

C’est en effet l’examen des noms donnés par les anciens aux diverses espèces de vases qui nous conduit à en reconnaître les différens usages et à substituer des explications toutes naturelles à des interpretations ou trop abstraites ou trop frivoles. A cet avantage réel pour la science, se joignant un autre motif, celui d’assigner à ces monumens une dénomination positive qui fût généralement reconnue; car les noms que l’on donne à Naples aux vases grecs n’ont pas été adoptés dans le reste de l’Italie, et sont entièrement inconnus en France, en Allemagne, en Angleterre et dans les autres parties de l’Europe.67

Terms used to describe vase shapes had not yet been formulated. Names such as amphora, hydria, krater and skyphos do not appear in any 18th or early 19th century texts. Vases, whatever their shape or use, are only referred to as vasi, vasculi or sometimes bicchiero or verre 66 in the case of obvious drinking vessels. In 1829, Théodor Panofka published his definitive Recherches sur les véritables noms des vases grecs, et sur leurs différens usages d’après les auteurs et les monumens (sic) anciens in which he lists 106 vase shapes, ‘Des noms grecs et napolitaĭns des vases antiques’, giving them names from ancient sources. In an appended ‘Notes’, he gives an exhaustive list of ancient sources in which each vase name is mentioned. Although he refers to ‘noms napolitaĭns’, he does not specify any vase shape as being South Italian or Attic and does not mention loutrophorus (a name perhaps not yet invented), although he lists louterion. Neither does he list the bail amphora, but he does illustrate a hydria shape with a bail on the top, which he calls a kados. He also mentions a vaso a tromba as a variation of an amphora, but does not describe or illustrate it.

Gerhard followed suit in Rapporto Volcente in 1831. He listed some unusual names for ‘Magna Grecian’ vases: oxybaphon (vaso a campania); al bombylios; siccome della chytra; l’anfora nolana; l’anfora tirrena; skaphe; kyathis.68 Unfortunately, he does not describe the shapes, and the tavoli numbers do not match the plates. Jean de Witte, who catalogued the vase collection of Le Chevalier E. Durand sold in Paris in 1836, had recognised 104 vase shapes. The British Museum recognised 203 shapes, and Jahn 86 shapes. The Italian system was based

  For naming of shapes see Sparkes in Agora 12, Sparkes & Talcott (1970). 65   Purcell & Gould (1986) 43. 66   Perhaps the name for ‘glass’ had caught on to any drinking vessel. 64

  Panofka (1829) 1.   Gerhard (1831) 15-16.

67 68

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s on Neapolitan antiquities dealers; Canino’s two catalogues were only divided into cups and pots.

vases. Regarding terms for vase-types used in ancient Greece, two other vase names have come down to us from graffiti scratched on the base of a krater:75 ‘lekythia’ and ‘skyphoi’. However, there is no proof as to which shapes these referred, as both names are scratched on one vase. Albeit, two surviving hydria have hy scratched on their bases.76 Some scratched inscriptions had been noticed and published by Panofka in 1829, but some of these caused confusion: it could not be agreed whether ΚΑΛ scratched on a hydria stood for kalpis or kalos.77 Jahn’s catalogue of the Munich Collection also contained vase inscriptions, but according to Hackl, more inscriptions came to light when some of the vases were cleaned after Jahn had catalogued them.78

In 1854, Jahn made up a chart to show how Panofka and Gerhard’s names compared, with a third column to show the equivalent Italian names. 69 The majority of names concurred, the exceptions being P.’s kotyle for G.’s skyphos, P.’s nestoris for G.’s amphora mit Räderhenkeln, P.’s olpe for G.’s oinochoe, P.’s deinos (dinos) for G.’s skaphe oder holmos and P.’s lekane for G.’s Apulian stamnos, and P.’s chone kothonides for G.’s askos. Interestingly, Jahn gives the Italian equivalent of this last shape as bicchiere. Most other Italian names given are vaso a and then Jahn’s description of the shape, e.g. ‘vaso a volute’. In 1833, Jean-Antoine Letronne (1787-1848), Professor of Archaeology at the College de France, attacked Panofka’s work by publishing Observations philologiques et archéologiques sur les noms des vases grecs à l’occasion de l’ouvrage de M. Th. Panofka, saying that he had not only done nothing for the study of the names of vaseshapes, but had misinterpreted the passages in Athenaeus and other ancient authors, and had put the study on the wrong track, from which it would have to be put back to the beginning and started again.70 Letronne believed that putting the original names to (‘three to four hundred types of’) vases was an impossible task, and proposed that an artificial method of classification should be invented which divided vases into specific denominations, based on features such as ornamentation and workmanship, similar to that used by naturalists.71 However, Gerhard responded in 1836 in Annali agreeing with Panofka’s vase names.72

In recent times Maria-Letizia Lazzarini examined the difficulties of naming vases from their inscriptions, she said: The names of vases that can be ascertained by inscriptions are few. They once more confirm for us the difficulty of attributing a name to a given form of vase. Identical forms are often in fact catagorised by different approaches. This happens for example with the vase commonly known as skyphos, whose names are ποτήριον, χύλιξ, (sic) χοτύλη, or for the kylix, which is also indicated by the name σχύφος the same name is given to various different forms, for example χύλιξ. The examination of the sources confirm the generality of most of the names that describe vases and as a consequence, and the pure conventionality of the terms used by modern scholars to indicate various forms. The act of being able to keep present in one’s mind the whole range of examples of vases whose inscriptions generate a name has permitted us to explain and to pinpoint the problem relative to some less famous names given, and to pinpoint geographically the boundaries of the use of some of the more famous names.

The problem with applying the names of vessels mentioned in ancient Greek sources to vases that have survived is that almost no mention is made in those sources of their shape, and there is no positive way of assuring that the right names are being applied to the right vases.73 D.A. Amyx cites the case of the ‘distinctive and familiar’ stamnos. He said:

At the end it is interesting to observe the bare inscriptions which simply contain the name of vases and the owner. Next to the very basic inscription there are others that exalt the qualities of the same vase giving it attributes χαλός, εϋποτος, ήδύποτος, or those who even include the qualities of the vase and those of the possessor of the vase. Sometimes these qualities are summed up in one adjective χαλος - χαλý or using diverse terms the owner χαλά and the owner of the vase ποιχιλα the kylix. Furthermore, one can note that nearly all the vases we are talking about here take you back with their epigraphs to the happy convivial atmosphere, and we must not be surprised because they were designed for ‘convito’.79

Most strongly against it is the fact that the stamnos was often used for storing and transporting wine whereas the “stamnos” shape, with its wide mouth-opening and lack of a real neck, would have been poorly suited to those purposes. In this connection, Furtwängler aptly observes that the “stamnos” of modern terminology is better placed among the kraters, or mixing vessels.74 Amyx suggests that the name krater as used today is almost certainly correct as the shape is so suited to its use, and also because of the graffiti on some of the actual   Jahn (1854) 89-90.   Letronne (1833) I. 429. 71   Letronne (1833) I. 430. 72   Gerhard (1836) 147-58. 73  Although many Greek roots give clues to use, such as pyxis from pyxos (box-wood) and kissybion from kissos (ivy-wood) for either a cup made from ivy-wood or with ivy decoration. See Kanowski (1984), Gericke (1970) & Simon (1976). 74  Amyx (1958) 191. Furtwängler (1904) 83. 69 70

 A r-f kalyx-krater by the Troilos Painter, Copenhagen NM 126, ARV2 297.11. 76   BM GR.7-10.2, ARV2 1060.138 and St. Petersburg 1206, ARV2.1060.141. See Johnston in Rasmussen & Spivey (1991) 224-8. 77   Hackl (1909) 8. 78   Hackl (1909) 14. 79   Lazzarini (1973-4) 375. Lazzarini uses χ rather than κ in the spelling 75

63

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Christopher Wordsworth, British resident in Athens, wrote Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical in 1859. This ambitious work attempted to cover all aspects of Greece ancient and modern, including Magna Graecia. In his passages on the origins of Greek vases and their shapes he said:

settler potters in Apulia and Lucania into a more stylised shape with added red-figure painting.85 This shape later transformed into an essentially Greek vase shape, almost unrecognisable from the original trozzella.86 To scholars, the bold, angular shape of the handles evoked the heroic age, Panofka’s ‘les fournies par Homère’, and they associated it with the cup of Nestor mentioned by Dionysius Thrax, thus the red-figure version became known as the nestoris.87 Another South Italian shape, the large Apulian loutrophorus, ‘bathwater carrier’ probably had its name adapted from the smaller Attic louterion, but this name starts to appear in publications in the first half of the 20th century without explanation. In South Italy the red-figure bail-amphora appears to have been exclusive to Campania,88 and is self-explanatory in that it is a standard amphora with a bail, or bucket handle, attached to the top. Similarly, the knob-handled patera (shallow dish), and the piatto da pesco - fish plate - are plainly named. It appears that the naming of South Italian shapes was more improvised than that of the long scholarly debate on the names of the more revered Attic shapes.

Gourds were the vessels used in such a state of society; and acorns and flowers naturally suggested some of the beautiful forms observable in pottery even in the earliest times. The originals are made of coarse blackbrown clay, and are classed among the earliest of Italian fictile art, - the form of the one being copied from a very primitive water vessel, the skin of an animal, and is called Askos. Such skins are still used in Italy for containing wine.80 He then goes on with a seemingly unique theory on vase colouring: The earliest and most ready pigment was undoubtedly blood, - a thin and colouring liquid, which dyes a dark brown colour, and which might, during sacrifice, have occasionally assumed, while flowing, the recognisable forms of objects, as we see in shadows which are cast upon the flat ground. [he goes on] There is no attempt at precision of form, such as distinguishes a subsequent style, in which we find a careful outline given by incised or deeply-scratched lines. The colour appears blacker and more glossy, and the clay ground of the vase, moreover, is covered with a kind of varnish, which gives a richness and polish to the whole surface.81

Lise Hannestad said in her paper on Greek pottery and Greek identity that pottery was a feature of a mode of life which played a part in the identity of emigrated Greeks. As imports of pottery from the Greek core region became fewer, attempts were made to imitate the developments in pottery in the homeland, and if a local ware was attractive, Greek shapes were produced in it, shape and function being more relevant to Greek ethnicity than fabric.89 130 years of the Jatta Family

Despite his eccentric ideas on dyes, Wordsworth’s book is otherwise good for its time: he illustrates with some fine and very accurate engravings the main vase shapes, giving them names which, with some slight variations in spelling, are still generally in use today: pyxis; scyphus; aryballus; lecythus; cylix; hydria; amphora; alabastron; œnochöe; cyathus; celebe (column krater); and rhyton.82 He also believed that most funerary vases had: ‘in every case, except the one before us (the Burgon Panathenaic Amphora) an outer vase of a coarser material added for protection.’83

From the early 1800s Giovanni and Gulio Jatta di Puglia built up a huge collection at the Palazzo Jatta, just north of Bari, containing many of the finest South Italian vases yet found, literally as they came out of the ground, by offering to buy at good rates and arranging organised excavations. Gulio’s wife came from a vase-collecting family and had a major role in the acquiring of the vases. In 1842, after Gulio’s death, she built the Palazzo Jatta just to house the collection. After Giovanni’s death she pleaded with the King of Naples to be allowed to keep the collection in the family.90 Her son (another Giovanni) continued adding to it and produced the Catalogo del Museo Jatta in 1869, I Vasi Italo-Greci del Signor Caputi di Ruvo in 1877, and Cenno storico sull’antichissima città di Ruvo in 1884. In turn, his son Michele continued in the tradition of

The naming of vase shapes peculiar to South Italy was ignored by scholars who, in the 19th century, were arguing over the establishment of correct names for each Attic shape. South Italian shapes either evolved from Attic originals, or developed from native Italian vessels; most names of vase shapes were adopted in the 19th century from those mentioned in classical literature, modern utility names, or occasionally a native Italic name. The native Messapian trozzella84 was developed by Greek

 There were b-f trozzellas – see infra, Schneider-Herrmann.   See Louvre K 538, LCS 9/961, Schneider-Herrmann (1980) fig. 56,56a, or BM F 178, LCS 8/791, pl. 67, 5,6. 87   See Panofka (1829) 37-8. 88  Although b-f and black-gloss bail-oinochoai were made in Attica in the first quarter of the 5th century. Oakley (2005) 17 states: ‘All the blackgloss and figured bail-oinochoai with known provenance come from Athens, Attika, or nearby Aigina.’ 89   Hannestad (2001) 9-15. 90   Oakeshott (1979) 4. No personal name is traceable for this woman who did more for the collection than all the Jatta men. 85 86

of Greek in this quote. 80  Wordsworth (1859) 7. 81  Wordsworth (1859) 8-10. 82  Wordsworth (1859) 32. 83  Wordsworth (1859) 34. BM B130, ABV 89.1. 84   Less commonly ‘torzella’.

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s Confusion Caused by the Vulci Finds

digging and buying, and published ‘La collezione Jatta e l’ellenizzamento della Peucezia’ in 1932.91

On 21st April 1829, the core members of the Hypoboreans, headed by Gerhard (with the title Segretario Generale), founded the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, and were joined initially by Baron von Bunsen,95 Thorvaldsen, the aged antiquary Carlo Fea,96 and Olaus Kellermann as pro-segretario dell’Instituto. By 1834 the Instituto’s list of members included the majority of the most famous vase scholars of the day,97 and was publishing three journals: Bullettino, Annali, and Monumenti Antichi, with the indefatigable Gerhard editing all three and writing the majority of the articles in his rather eccentric Italian.

Gerhard and the Hyperboreans Eduard Gerhard92 (1795-1867) was the most significant South Italian vase scholar of the first half of the 19th century, and also the equal in Attic vase study to any scholar of his day. He originally went to Rome in 1822 to ease an eye ailment, but remained until 1837, becoming a renowned archaeologist whose main interest was South Italian vases, and founder of the Hyperboreans. The Hyperboreans heralded the beginnings of a new age of attributions, recognition of signatures, the cult of personalities, and accurate cataloguing. In 1823 five scholars, Barthold Niebuhr, Baron Otto von Stackelberg, Théodor Panofka, August Kestner and Eduard Gerhard united in Rome to form a group called the Hyperboreans.93 Their aim was to systematically study the vast amount of ancient artifacts accumulated in Italy which were in large private collections, or stacked in the newly built museums awaiting cataloguing and display. They were joined in 1825 by the Duc de Luynes who helped in financing grandiose projects such as trying to form an international association of all archaeologists which would publish a scientific journal, and to create an extensive set of foliosize volumes of lithographs illustrating ancient finds to be called the “Antike Bildwerke.” This vast project was abandoned with only one third of the plates finished.

The Instituto had been formed shortly after (and no doubt largely because of) the finding of around 3,400 vases at the necropolis at Vulci in the summer of 1828. This was more vases, and many of equal quality, found in one year than Hamilton had been able to accumulate in forty years. The necropolis was on the estates of Napoleon’s brother, Lucian Bonaparte, the self-styled Prince di Canino.98 Gerhard, being a close friend of the prince, was able to examine most of the vases and publish many in the Instituto’s Bullettino. Antonio and Alessandro Candelori, who held the lease of Campo Scala at Vulci, obtained a licence to excavate on 22 August and began digging on 13 October, 1828. The first three months’ finds were sold to the Vatican Museum for 4,500 scudi in January 1829. The Candelori licence lists two partners: Vicenzo Campanari, to whom no other reference can be found except that the renewal of his licence to excavate was denied in Feburary 1832 because of unauthorised restoration to vases, and for secretly selling some of his best finds to private collectors. The second partner, Melchiade Fossati, disappeared with a large part of the finds in March 1831, some months after being caught selling pieces to the Marquess of Northampton.99

Gerhard returned to Berlin in 1837 and went on to become director of the Berlin Museum and Professor of Archaeology at Berlin University. He pioneered the reading of inscriptions on vases and was one of the first to interpret the meaning of Kalos names. In 1839 he was the first to read the potter’s name Meidias on the Meidias painter’s hydria at the British Museum (see chapter III), and accurately interpret the scene as the Rape of the Daughters of Leukippos by Kastor and Polydeukes. 94 Among his many published works on Greek and Italiote vasepainting are Etruskische und kampanische Vasenbilder des Königlichen Museum zu Berlin in 1843, Apulische Vasenbilder in 1845, and the four volume inventory of Greek vases, Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder begun in 1839, the final volume being completed in 1858.

Gerhard remarked on the vases being found: Perciocchè non contava più di 2100 oggetti, compresivi molti vasi Semplicemente verniciati e scevri d’ogni dipintura. Ma il gran numero di tali stoviglie non n’è certamente il primo vanto. Nuovi meriti e novelle particolarità si sviluppano ne’vasi volcenti, e tanto piu gli rendono preziosi per le arti e per l’antichità quanto

  Jatta M. (1932) 3-33, 241-82.   NDB. ‘The founder of classical archaeology’ Schnapp (2004). 93   AnnInstCorrA (1830), Lullies & Schiering (1988). Niebuhr (17761831) was Prussian Ambassador to the Vatican and had written a 3 volume history of Rome (pub. between 1811-1832); von Stackelberg (17871837) was a German antiquary, resident in Rome, who had excavated in Sicily and discovered (with Carl Haller) the Temple of Aphaia at Aigina; Panofka (1800-1858) published Recherches sur les veritables noms des vases grecs in 1829, and became a professor at Berlin and curator of the vase collection; Kestner (1777-1853), archivist of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, was a Hanoverian diplomat (more famous as a composer) resident in Rome and an avid collector of antiquities. 94   D’Hancarville had interpreted this scene as depicting the Race of Hippomenes and Atalanta.

  Christian Karl von Bunsen (1791-1860) Prussian Minister to the Papal See (1824-38), antiquarian and collector, doctor of the Prussian Akademie der Wissenschaften. 96   Fea (1753-1836) became Commissario delle Antichità in 1800 and oversaw and imposed the new laws of 1802 regulating antiquities. He also held the post of Papal Archaeologist and edited the Italian translation of Winckelmann’s History of Ancient Art in 1783-4, adding 18 important letters from Winckelmann to Mengs (the originals now lost). 97   James Millingen, Müller, Böttiger, Inghirami, Creuzer, Zahn, Braun, the Duc de Blacas, Lenormant, plus Goethe, Champollion, and the Greek travellers, Dodwell and Christopher Wordsworth. 98   See Giroux (2002). For catalogues of Canino’s vase collection see Dubois (1843), DeWitte (1845) & Barthélemy (1848). 99   For Candelori, Campanari and Fossati see Giroux (2002) 128.

91

95

92

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery meno l’attuale loro stato è mentito dà consueti inganni d’abili restauratori.100

He grouped them into ‘Egyptianising (Orientalizing); Tyrrhenian (Greek settlers); Nolan (Attic) and Etruscan (native)’. These categories were used by other cataloguers105 for some years until the point where enough knowledge had been gained to be more accurate and specific.

These finds of mostly Attic vases were so prolific that scholars started to wonder if they had been mistaken about their Athenian origin, and if the vases really were Etruscan as previously thought.101 Panofka, Kestner and Kellermann were still discoursing on the Etruscan connection and referring back to Lanzi in 1834.102 Charles Lenormant remarked:

Gerhard’s dating for the Vulci vases of 480 to 280 BC was fairly accurate for the vast majority, except that a few of the vases found were earlier. Gerhard gave an account in the Prussian Official Gazette of May 1829 showing how the early exaggerations of Etruscan connections with the Bible were still clinging on long after the true origin of vases found in Southern Italy had been established:

Cependant nous ne doutons par que l’apparition des vases de Vulci n’eût embarrassé le Jugement et troublé la confiance du docte jésuite (Lanzi); et quant aux successeurs de Lanzi, avec toute leur expérience et leur sagacité, ils n’ont pu encore résoudre la difficulté que soulève la production d’un fait aussi extraordinaire, en l’absence de presque tout témoignage lettéraire et historique.103

…The Prince de Canino, at the inspiration of his chaplain, thought he recognized on a drinking bowl, instead of Dionysos, who is crossing the sea in a ship with masts hung with vines, Noah the discoverer of wine. The name of the potter Exekias was declared to be the Hebrew Ezekiel, and some cracks that had been caused by bad firing in the glaze were Looked upon as hieroglyphics dating probably from the time of the flood.

Why were there far more ‘Athenian’ vases in Vulci than there were in Athens? Even Gerhard was doubtful that so many vases would have been brought from Athens to Etruria, while far fewer were being found in Athens itself. He suggested that Attic potters and painters had set up factories in Etruria or the South of Italy. It is now sure that the vast majority of vases from Vulci were made in the Kerameikos in Athens, but in the 1830s, Furtwängler and Beazley’s techniques of recognizing individual artists by their brush-strokes and incisions and comparing them with fragments from the Kerameikos were 60 to 70 years away.

After the large discoveries at Vulci, Canino went back to the theory of Etruscan origin and said that finds now being made in Greece were imports from Italy. He also thought that vases found in Greece had been planted there by men who had stolen them from his Tuscan estate. But all these new vases did not necessarily help to advance study and caused many misapprehensions. As Sparkes points out, ‘It would be a mistake to entertain any ideas that the flood of new material immediately produced answers to all questions.’106

Gerhard had to find a way of classifying this mass of vases and of making their recording into some sort of system. He distinguished three schools:

In 1848 George Dennis, commenting on the finds at Vulci, remarked:

Il perchè ho posto il fondamento principale della presente relazione in questo, ch’esiste una perfetta diversità tra le varie sorte di vasellame Volcente, confirme ciocchè dimostrano l’artificio greco o italogreco, un altro artificio pur greco, ma finora non rilevato, e finalmente l’artificio degli Etruschi: e posto mente che codesta differenza cosi dell’arte come de’pensieri espressi o rapprestentati, non possa essere accidentale, ma debba assolutamente ascriversi all’osservanza usuale o statuita di certe norme adoperate o dai nolani ed altri artisti greci ed italo-greci, o da Greci residenti nell’Etruria, o dagli Etruschi istessi, non ristarò dal cominciare il mio discorso col distinguere tre scuole, se non d’artisti diversi almeno d’artificio, le qualiquante volte in contreremo tra’volcenti vasellami, co’nomi di scuola greca, o tirrena, o etrusa distingueremo.104

In watching the excavations at Vulci I learned that the contents of adjoining tombs often differed widely in antiquity, style, and value – that sepulchres of various ranks, and different periods, lay mixed indiscriminately, and that the same tomb even sometimes contained objects of several ages, as though it had been the vault of one family through many generations.107 Adolf Michaelis said in 1908 that, ‘The general report made by Gerhard in regard to the entire find (at Vulci) in a publication of the Institute in 1831, the Rapporto Volcente, became famous as a model of a concise, complete, and lucid report, and laid the foundation for the science of antique painted vases.’108 However, archaeology, even for Gerhard, was still the acquisition, identification and categorising of artifacts.

  Gerhard (1831) 8. Gerhard apparently did not know the full quantity of vases found at Vulci. He also shows that the restoration of vases for financial gain had started immediately, and ‘inganni’ implies subterfuge: ‘the customary trickery of skilled restorers’. 101   Some scholars were still pursuing this logic 65 years later, see H.B. Walters (1896). 102   Gerhard (1834) 6-8. 103   Lenormant & Witte (1844-61) I. ix. 104   Gerhard (1831) 10. Gerhard writes in a quirky Italian often using Latin 100

constructions, e.g. qualiquante. 105   Such as Panofka, Jahn and Pottier. 106   Sparkes (1996) 61. 107   Dennis (1883) 451. 108   Michaelis (1908) 64.

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s Seeing artifacts as one part of a larger jigsaw explaining the past was still some way off. Excavating/collecting was still a separate part of the study of the past, as was its elite counterpart, philology.

the sceptre, are in relievo, and of gold. It is…probably not of older date than two centuries before the Christian era. It was found in 1830.111 The miniscule outline drawing in the text resembles a cup of the mid-5th century in shape, so her attempt at dating is widely out. This cup is now lost, but Beazley said the Hamilton-Grey Collection was sold at Sotheby’s on 7th June 1888.112

A prize amphora, the ‘Burgon Amphora’ found in 1813 by Thomas Burgon in Athens, was now presumably called into question, because Burgon defended it in a letter to the chevalier P.O. Brönsted, who, at the time, was writing an article on Panathenaic vases.109 Burgon wrote:

It is indicative of the times that, although the figure of Hera is clearly marked HPA, she is still referred to as Juno.113 Even after Lanzi’s publication and all the work done by German scholars, the old ideas did not abate, even the old chestnut of Hebrew origins lingers on: Mrs. Hamilton Grey said in her introduction,

…the recent discovery of so many Panathenaic prize amphorae in Italy, with inscriptions analogous to that on mine, has given rise to discussions, in some of which the genuineness of my Vase (especially the inscription) has been called in question, it becomes necessary for me to state that I washed and joined the fragments myself, with the greatest care, at Athens. The Vase was never out of my possession, and has not been restored, in the Italian sense of the word; the inscription is, therefore, in every respect genuine.110

That this Dodwell114 vase is of a very early date, and a sort of transition from Egyptian to the heroic style, I do not doubt; but I do greatly doubt whether in this the Etruscans were not the masters of the Greeks, rather than vice versâ. Heroic vases are the prolific manufacture of Etruria, while they were ever scarce in Greece…heroic vases have been found in Etrurian tombs of much older date than Demaratus: those, for instance, found at Cere in The Regulini Galassi tomb.

From these discoveries, the evidence again pointed to an Italian origin. It was as though Italy would never relinquish its claim on the paternity of Greek painted pottery. The 1820s saw a new facet in the study of figured vases: the identification of the artists and potters themselves. As signatures of painters and potters were deciphered, scholars became engrossed in these men, as a subject distinct from the shapes, origins and uses of the vases. Julius Sillig’s 1827 dictionary of ancient artists, Catalogus Artificum Graecorum et Romanorum, was the first of this popular genre of dictionaries of the ancient world to contain the names of potters and pot painters. Later, in 1887, Wilhelm Klein perfected this idea with his extensive catalogue devoted exclusively to vase signatures, Die Griechischen Vasen mit Meistersignaturen. He also showed that signatures appeared on vases in four different forms: 1. Ñποίησεν= ‘made by’; 2. ñγραψεν= ‘painted by’; 3. with maker and painter both signing, or two artists signing ‘made by’ (but never with two artists signing painted by); and finally; 4. one artist signing ‘made and painted’.

The Greek letters on the Corinthian vase did not appear to me the oldest style of writing, whilst the Etruscan inscriptions are only the oldest.115 These Greek letters, be it remembered, were taken from Phoenicia which is almost identical to the oldest Hebrew.116 In 1832, Carlo Fea, the oldest member of the Instituto di Corrispondenza (now in his eightieth year), wrote Storia degli vasi fittili dipinti che da 4 anni si trovano nello stato ecclesiastico in quella parte che è nell’Antica Etruria colla relazione della Colonia Lidia che li fece per più secoli del dominio dei Romani. This was a discourse on the finding of the vases in Etruria in the 1820s and 30s, and the debate on their dating and origins. Fea’s thesis was that the vases were made by Lydian settlers, citing Herodotus: ‘These (the Greek games) they (the Lydians) declare that they invented about the time when they colonised Tyrrhenia’117 as proof of Lydian colonisation. He also cited that the vases showed many scenes of the Trojan War (the Lydians, as neighbours of Troy, would have known these stories well), and that the clay of the vases was local. He believed that the ‘Lydian’ style had then spread to Magna

An English society lady, Mrs. Hamilton Grey, travelled around the ancient sites of Tuscany in 1839 and wrote a quaint book, Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria, in 1839 (1840). Unencumbered by the academic baggage of the day, she gives us her own unique insights into the discoveries, some freshly unearthed (although not this one): A beautiful cup with two handles from Vulci. In the inside Juno is painted upon a white ground. HPA is written by her. She is standing, and is dressed in a white tunic, with a purple veil, the edge of which is painted in palm leaves, one colour being laid upon another. The face is in natural tints. The diadem, the necklace, and

  Hamilton Grey (1840) 266.   ARV2 1612. 113   Similarly, when Gerhard (1831) 33-38, discusses representations of gods on S.I. vases, he refers to them as Giove, Minerva, Mercurio, Bacco, etc. 114   Edward Dodwell, author of A Classical and Topographical Tour Through Greece, 1819. 115   Mrs. Hamilton Grey does not justify how she acquired this experienced eye. Such dating would have been a challenge even to the erudition of Gerhard. 116   Hamilton Grey (1840) 23-4. 117   Herodotus 1.94. 111

112

  Brönsted (1832).   Quoted in Brönsted (1832) 109-10.

109 110

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Grecia. His dating of the vases as being contemporary with, or brought over by, the settlers, making them 9th or 8th century BC, was wildly out even for the scholarship of the 1830s.

disputed the mythical and symbolic interpretations of vase-painting by his contemporary Théodor Panofka, and the earlier writings of Friedrich Creuzer,123 and employed an empirical system based on identification. In 1854, in the introduction to his catalogue of the 2,000 or more vases in the Munich Museum: Beschreibung der Vasensammlung König Ludwigs in der Pinakothek zu München, Jahn wrote the first history of the study of Greek vases124 from Buonarroti to his own day. He followed the Etruscan debate, the influence of the Hamilton collection, inscriptions, the Vulci finds, Canino and Gerhard and the Instituto di Corrispondenza. He discusses the problem of identifying and regionalizing South Italian vases, and discusses Lanzi. He wonders why, although Italy has always been divided into ‘Upper- and Lower- Italy… and the two areas have always been separated, no painted vases have ever come to light in Upper-Italy.’125 He continues, ‘The wealth and the differences in nature of the vase finds make it necessary to make divisions of the different provinces.’126 He then recognises perhaps the main problem that has thwarted South Italian vase study (besides being unfashionable) to this day: the large amounts of vases being found, but not reported, resulting in the location and context being lost. He said:

It was at this exciting period of new discoveries in vase scholarship that South Italian red-figure began to be called ‘Italian Greek,’ and black-figure ‘Sicilian Greek.’ Although these new labels were not correct, they were heading in the right direction: most of the red-figure being found had been made by Greeks in South Italy, and Sicily had been Greek during the black-figure period. Baron Von Bunsen went further and decided most black-figure was Attic and most red-figure was South Italian.118 In 1837 Gustav Kramer (1806-88), a philologist, in his treastise Über den styl und die Herkunft der bemahlten griechischen Thongefässe,119 placed the origin of vases found in Italy by the palaeographic characters of their inscriptions. He ascribed the “orientalised” vases to the Corinthians; the black- and red-figure vases to the Athenians. In 1854 Otto Jahn confirmed Kramer’s theories in his introduction to his Beschreibung der Münchener Vasensammlung. Villard considers Kramer’s 1837 work and especially the introduction by Jahn in the Catalogue of the Pinacotheque Collection in Munich of 1854 to be the first scientific studies to come together on Greek pottery and direct studies exclusively to Attic pottery. Thus in the second half of the century, the studies of the positivist type, notably founded on historical and literary sources (the theatre in particular) prevailed.120 Jahn’s was the first really professional catalogue of vases and was the pattern followed by subsequent cataloguers.

Leider muss man auch hier die Klage wiederholen, dass genaue Fundnotizen im Verhältniss zu der Masse von Vasen selten sind, und meistens nur allgemeine Angaben vorliegen, die gewöhnlich nur auf Schlüssen aus dem Stil der Vasen beruhen. Hier können natűrlich nur die bestimmten Ueberlieferungen berűcksichtigt werden.127 Jahn became embroiled in academic disputes in the last decade of his life, and his large work, Griechische Bilderchroniken, was published after his death by his nephew and pupil the celebrated archaeologist Adolf Michaelis of Strassburg University.

Jahn Otto Jahn (1813-1869) was, with Gerhard, and later, Furtwängler, one of the three great vase scholars (all German) of the 19th century. Add a fourth, the Italian, Patroni, and we also have the the most important South Italian vase scholars of the 19th century, for all took a keen interest in, and advanced the study of, Italiote pottery. Jahn studied at Kiel, Leipzig and Berlin universities, then travelled for three years in Italy, where he was heavily influenced by the vase-scholar, Karl Otfried Müller (17971840) in Florence.

Between 1834 and 1841 the Prince de Canino’s superb collection was sold off, the very best of it being acquired by the new museum in Munich, giving them the foundations of the best collection anywhere (although the Berlin collection was bigger). In 1837, when King Ludwig of Bavaria applied to Pope Gregory XVI for permission to export his vase collection back to Munich, the reply came back, ‘Which collection?’ At this time of restricted excavation, when a percentage of finds had to be given to the State, King Ludwig had not informed the authorities that he had been building a collection. In fact, he had bought the majority of it from the Candelori brothers in 1831.128

Jahn was given the chair of archaeology at Leipzig in 1847,121 and in 1855 became professor of the science of antiquity at Bonn. Finally, in 1867, on the death of Gerhard, he succeeded to the chair of archaeology at Berlin.122 He  According to Michaelis (1908) 64. However, there are no recorded publications on vases by Bunsen. 119   Dedicated to Bunsen. 120  Villard (1989) 177-8. 121   From which he was expelled in 1851 for his involvement in an imperialist political movement. 122   Jahn was a polymath who not only published books on Greek art such as Hellenische Kunst (1846), critical editions of Cicero, Livy, Juvenal, et al, but also wrote a biography of Mozart that was the standard work for the next 100 years. His pupils included Mommsen, Wilamowitz, 118

Michaelis and Nietzsche. 123   In his Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen of 1810-12. 124   Jahn (1854) ix-ccxlvi. 125   By ‘no painted vases have ever come to light in Upper-Italy’ he must mean Italy north of Etruria. 126   Jahn (1854) xxxiv. 127   Ibid. 128   Ridley (2000) 325-6.

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The Century of German Vase-scholarship. Part 1. Post Lanzi until the 1860s Panofka wrote the catalogues for the publication of the Duc de Luynes collection between 1829 and 1840. In 1845 he published the catalogue of the Berlin Antikensammlung, and in 1855 took over from Gerhard as curator of vases at Berlin.

painters of suitably decorating the curved surfaces of a vase, and preferred the flat even surfaces supplied by the circular mirrors and sides of the cistae.132 Much later (in 1914) Wilamowitz, reminiscing over his long life in classics, showed the predominance of philology in nineteenth century German classical study. Senior academics insisted that archaeology and the study of ancient art be linked to Greek texts at every stage. Of his undergraduate years in the late 1860s (under Jahn, who had become the pre-eminent vase specialist of the day after Gerhard’s death) Wilamowitz states:

Even as late as the second quarter of the nineteenth century, dating was still vague and eccentric theories about dating were still being formulated: Heinrich von Brunn,129 basing his ideas on inscriptions, decided that vase-painting was archaizing and that all black- and red-figure vases were painted in Roman times.130 Also, although it was generally agreed that the majority of figured vases found in Italy were of Greek origin, anomalies would not go away. Dennis remarked on the conflicting evidence of tombs:

A repeated request for archaeological exercises he could not grant, but he advised me in my work on this subject, and finally charged me with the subject of a prize-essay. The Satyric Drama was to be compared with the vase paintings.133

The extraordinary multitude of these vases, bearing Greek subjects, of Greek design, and with Greek inscriptions – the names of the potter and painter being also recorded as Greeks – has suggested the idea that Vulci must have been a Greek colony, or that a portion of its inhabitants were of that nation, living in a state of isopolity with the Etruscans. But these views are opposed by the fact that nothing found on the site, except the painted vases, is Greek; the tombs and all their other contents are unequivocally Etruscan.131

On the death of Jahn in 1869, Wilamowitz studied under Reinhard Kekulé, who was publishing on vases in Archäologische Zeitung at this time, and later became director of the Altertümer Museum in Wiesbaden. Wilamowitz said: At last something was done in the way of provision for archaeology: for Kekulé took up his residence as lecturer and at once was a great success…with the philologists it did not get a side glance…Though a pupil of Eduard Gerhard, of whom it is reported that he laid aside a vase or bronze with the phrase ‘merely beautiful’, Kekulé required beauty of a work that was to arrest his attention. The kind of archaeology at which he wished to work was the history of art, such as it had been to Winckelmann.134

Now that the origin of the majority of vases found in Italy had been established as Greek or Greek settler, those vases that actually were made by the Etruscans were downgraded and held in little esteem. Samuel Birch (cataloguer of the British Museum vase collection in 1851) gave his opinion of Etruscan vases in his ambitious History of Ancient Vases, published in 1857: Although the Etruscans executed such admirable works in bronze … they never attained to high excellence in their pottery.

Alain Schnapp, in his The Discovery of the Past, said of this period (although he seems to put it a decade or so earlier):

The total failure of the Etruscans in vase-painting finds a curious parallel in their sculpture; All their best work is to be sought in their engraving or figures in low relief, as in the mirrors and cistae. Yet the same mirrors and cistae show clearly that it was from no lack of ability in drawing that they failed; wherefore it is the less easy to understand, not only the absence of all originality in their painted vases, but also the rarity of the instances of their imitative tendencies in this respect.

In Germany, after the 1848 revolution, schools of archaeology flourished everywhere, at that time more than ten German universities had chairs of archaeology, whilst Great Britain and France had only one each.135 In the larger part of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, black-figure and archaic red-figure had taken precedence over later classical and fourth century red-figure in academic interest. But in 1885 Franz Winter published Die jüngeren attischen Vasen und ihr Verhältnis zur grossen Kunst, which explored the change in drawing techniques and the flow of lines in drapery. This was directly relevant to the examination of all South Italian red-figure vases that were contemporary with Late Attic wares.

Apparently the red-figured vases which were imported into Etruria in such large numbers in the fifth century served as prototypes, not for their paintings, but for the engraved mirrors… it may have been that they shrank from the task so successfully achieved by Greek   (1822-94), Professor of Archaeology at Munich, and Furtwängler’s tutor. Author of the massive Geschichte der griechischen Künstler (185359), & Probleme in der Geschichte der Vasenmalerei (1871). 130   Showing that von Brunn did not recognise Attic and S.I. as separate fabrics. 131   Dennis (1848) 462-63. 129

  Quote from H.B. Walters revised edition 1905, vol.II: 306.  Wilamowitz (1930) 106. 134  Wilamowitz (1930) 106-7. 135   Schnapp (1996) 308. 132 133

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Heinrich Heydemann studied at Berlin under Gerhard and went to Italy to study vases. In 1866 he catalogued the collection of Giovanni Jatta at Ruvo and in 1868 the collection of the Naples Museum, a massive undertaking. He then moved on to the collection at Palermo. He returned to Berlin in 1869 to teach in the new Department of Archaeology. In 1870 he published Humoristische Vasenbilder aus Unteritalien (as part of the Winckelmannfest in Berlin) which concentrated on the depiction of satyrs battling with animals, e.g. head butting bulls and billy-goats, and a man trying to beat a snake out of a tree which is sprouting oinochoai. He followed this in 1872 by Die Vasensammlungen des Museo Nazionale zu Neapel, which he states was inspired by Jahn’s 1854 Munich catalogue. Besides his methodical cataloguing, in 1883 Heydemann published one of his most interesting pieces of research: Alexander der grosse und Dareios Kodomannos auf unteritalischen Vasenbildern, the recognition of scenes from the campaigns of Alexander on four Apulian vases (now lost). These vases, two from an Etruscan tomb at Ruvo, one a fragment only, and the last, known only from a plate in the Hamilton collection, show figures recognised by Heydemann as Darius and Alexander.136 They have the same general theme as the Alexander Mosaic,137 although the scenes include many other figures (some mythical: Ariadne and Orpheus?) which do not appear in the mosaic and are more difficult to identify. Heydemann supposed that the figure of Dionysus represented the god’s Indian triumph, suggesting Alexander as the new Dionysus.138 Heydemann’s final work on South Italian vases, ‘Die Phlyakendarstellungen auf bemalten Vasen’139 was published in 1886, three years before his untimely death at the age of 47 in 1889.

  Naples H 3220, and double plate in Heydemann (1883).  There is a chronological problem. Philoxenos’ original painting, of which the mosaic is thought by some to be a copy, is dated to c.310BC, therefore the vase (c.330 BC) pre-dates it.The pose of the mounted Alexander figure on the vase has even more similarity to that on the hunting mural in the tomb at Vergina, c.340, but Heydemann could not have seen this as it was not discovered until the 1970s. More recently, Cohen (1997) 51 has expressed doubt that this 2nd century mosaic is taken from a 4th century Greek painting, she states: ‘Scholars of Roman art have rightly begun to express a mounting dissatisfaction with the time-honored practice of diverting Roman accomplishments and enlisting them to the ranks of Greek art’. She further states that the Apulian vase-paintings of Darius and Alexander are closer in date to the battle than the painting that inspired the mosaic. However, whatever the answer, it appears to me that the said vases, the mosaic, and the Vergina murals show a set mounted attack pose that must have its prototype before the earliest of these works, i.e. the 340s BC. Andronikos, the excavator of Vergina, supported Karl Schefold’s view that the “Tomb of Philip II” mural and the original of the mosaic were by the same hand: Philoxenos. Andronicus (1984) 117-18. However, there is an obvious temptation to assign these works to Philoxenos as he is the only hand at this date that we have any substantial information on. 138   Heydemann (1883) 26. 139   Heydemann (1886) 260-313. 136 137

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Chapter IV The 1870s until the 1900s from 1874, published La Grande Grèce, paysages et histoire, 1881-4, and he followed this with À travers l’Apulie et la Lucanie, notes de voyage, 1883. These were the accounts of his travels on foot and horseback to the totally unfrequented4 areas of the toe and heel of Italy. His descriptions of widespread malaria and picaresque brigands suggests the area was still unsafe for travel in the 1880s. Fifteen years later, Ely called the region, ‘Nobody’s Way Nowhere.’5

I have chosen the 1870s as the dividing point of 19th century South Italian vase study as there was a hiatus between the old established South Italian vase scholars Gerhard and Jahn, who had been working solidly since the 1830s until their deaths in 1867 and 1869 respectively, and the up and coming new scholars. There was some activity in the 1870s: Heydemann’s publication on South Italian vases in 1870, followed by his cataloguing of the vases in the Naples Museum in 1872; Jatta’s publication of the Caputi vases at Ruvo in 1877, and Michaelis’ visit to Deepdene the same year. However, in the 1880s the seminal South Italian vase scholars Furtwängler, Patroni, Heydemann and the often wrong, but indefatigable Macchioro, started work, followed by others such as Hartwig, Reinach, Hauser, Ely and Watzinger.

Godfrey Wordsworth Turner, contributing the Calabria and Sicily section to the 1880s series of travel books, Picturesque Europe, extols the landscape of the region and ignores the malaria. However, he cites the danger from the inhabitants to be the only ban: Naples, or Salerno, is usually the southern limit of the wanderings of tourists in Italy. A few make a hurried visit to the temples of Paestum, situated just in front of the “ankle” of Italy. It is not because this southernmost extremity of the classic land is wanting in natural attractions or historical reminiscences. The combination of rugged mountain scenery with Southern luxuriance might worthily tempt a multitude of luxurious travellers not only to make flying visits there, but to sojourn on the cool hill slopes, or the rich valleys, bays, and luxuriant seaweed slopes of this beautiful and neglected land. The only reason of the neglect is that the miserable inhabitants of this fair region cannot understand that they might obtain a hundredfold more of English and American gold by providing comfortable hotels and dealing honestly with visitors, than by waylaying them on the road, cutting their throats, or detaining them for ransom.

The Exploration of Southern Italy An anomaly in the history of South Italian vase study is the comparative lateness at which scholars reached accurate conclusions on the subject, and placed styles to regions. Southern Italy had remained largely unexplored, several books were written in the 16th and early 17th centuries recounting the ancient history and antiquities of Magna Graecia: the Dominican, Leandro Alberti (1479-1552), published Descrittione di tutta Italia at Bologna in 1550 which has archaeological observations that include southern Italy, but they are mainly copied from the imaginings of Annius Viterbo.1 Antonio Ferraris (‘Il Galateo’) (dates unknown) was born in the town of Galatone in Japygia, his De situ Japygiae (1558) is probably the only early book on Magna Graecia written by someone living in the region south of Naples. Gabriele Barrio’s De antiquitate et situ Calabriae (1571) concentrates on the history and antiquities of the area, but the conditions in Calabria at that date make it unlikely that it was an empirical travel book.2 In the 1740s and 1750s Alessio Mazzocchi wrote and corresponded much on the rediscovery of Magna Graecia, but from the safety of Naples.3 Sir William Hamilton had visited Calabria in early 1783 to see the results of the earthquake and make a report for the Royal Society, but he had sailed there and back from Naples and only landed on the coast.

As it is, there are only two ways of safely seeing Calabria: to go well-armed in sufficient numbers to keep cowardly brigands at a respectful distance; or, as I have done in dangerous parts of Italy and Sicily, to travel on foot, with worn-out, mud-stained, ragged clothes, and no luggage at all.6 As late as 1901, the author George Gissing wrote of his Italian host’s reaction to his intended journey south of Naples:

The first genuine travel book on the region south of Naples was not published until 1881. François Lenormant, professor of Archaeology at the Bibliothèque Nationale

Both are astonished at my eccentricity and hardiness in undertaking a solitary journey through the wild

 Viterbo Antiquitatum Variarum of 1498, and Volumen libris septuaginta distinctum de antiquitatibus et gestis Etruscorum, undated (c.1490s). For Viterbo’s fantasies and forgeries see Walters (1989). 2   For Galateo and Barrio see von Hase (1989) 53-4, and Lyons (1997) 230. 3   See Ceserani (2007) 249-59. 1

  Except for the direct route to Brindisi.   Ely (1896) 114. 6  Turner (c.1880) vol. II, 250-1. 4 5

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery South…it would as soon occur to them to set out for Morocco as for Calabria.7

Munich in 1894, and later director of the Glyptothek and conservator of the vase collection.

Despite the remoteness of the southern-most part of Italy, museums to display the quantities of antiquities being found in the region were opened in Lecce in 1868, Bari in 1875 and Taranto in 1887.8 Moon said that Lenormant found no museums or even private collections on his visit to Taranto in 1880, and quotes the 1957 guide to the Taranto Museum as ‘making short work of this poor little collection … which consisted mainly of murex shells’,9 however she immediately contradicts this by saying ‘Taranto gradually replaced Lecce as the principle centre of Apulian antiquities and received of right the first-fruits of any excavations’.10 The Italian journal Notizie degli scavi di antichità, which reported excavations taking place throughout Italy in the last quarter of the 19th century, shows there was some research in the far south of Italy, but this was mainly the recording of epigraphy, and mostly at coastal towns like Bari and Taranto that could be reached by sea. NSc did report the finding of Attic and native pottery caches in the 1880s and 90s,11 but these were mainly in Tuscany and the area around Naples, and not in the south.

In his Beschreibung der Vasensammlung im Antiqarium of 1885, Furtwängler had already clearly defined the three main South Italian schools: Campanian, Lucanian and Apulian. In 1893, he published Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture. On three short pages, tacked on almost as an afterthought to his chapter on Pheidias, he lays down clearly and for the first time, the foundations of modern South Italian vase scholarship. After discoursing on the influence of Greek sculpture on Southern Italy and other Greek colonies, he states: There is still a second class of monuments which shows clearly how strong was the influx of Attic art into Magna Graecia in the Pheidian period, and how powerful was the stimulus it gave to fresh production. I refer to the vases. The style and composition which we have proved to belong to the reliefs on the shield of the Parthenos and to correspond with one series of Attic vases, reappear all at once in a class of vases made in South Italy. These vases must be considered as the first products of new potteries, since there is no early red-figure painting proper to this district.

The 1890s were perhaps the busiest years in the history of South Italian vase scholarship, with two seminal publications by Furtwängler and Patroni, and many other works.

They are not the superficial half misunderstood imitations of imported vases which the non-Hellenic craftsmen of South Etruria and Campania were in the habit of making about the same time or earlier; they are a purely Greek product.14

Salomon Reinach published ‘Peintures de Vases Antiques recueillies par Millin (1808) et Millingen (1813)’ in the Bibliothèque des Monuments Figurés Grecs et Romains in 1891, and was one of the few to comment on the history of the study of ancient vases. He listed the three periods of study that vases had passed through up to that date: artistic style, interpretation, and historical background.12

He goes on to trace a close relationship between this class of South Italian vase and Attic vases of about 440 BC and those of the following decades. He associated it with the founding of Thurii in 444/3 BC, but in 1990 Trendall said that excavations since 1893 have so far failed to produce much in the way of confirmatory evidence.15 However there is still a problem to what degree Italiote pottery is the work of Greek colonists, and to what degree it is the outcome of the indigenous areas – which had long been Hellenised. ‘One not only has to be aware of the indigenous character of certain images before one can pose this question, for example the armour of the warriors or the costume of rural women’.16 The South Italian vases correspond exactly to the Attic vases in form and decoration, and also in the general style and composition of the painting. He said, however, that there is a marked difference in the technical makeup. The clay is much lighter and duller than the Attic fabric,17 and a thin coat of red colour is put on to imitate Athenian vases.18 Many details which are included on Attic vases are just painted out on the South Italian variety.

He said of the lack of study of South Italian vases in favour of the classical: Il est rare aujourd’hui de trouver dans un recueil savant la gravure d’un de ces vases italio-grecs qui faisaient la joie d’un Hamilton ou d’un Tischbein, et qui ont encore bien des choses à nous apprendre.13 Furtwängler Adolf Furtwängler (1853-1907) studied classics at Freiburg, Leipzig and Munich Universities, and in 1874 he wrote his first work on Greek vases: Eros in der Vasenmalerei. He became professor of classical archaeology at   Gissing (1901) 2.  This is surely due to their coastal location and closeness to the busy port of Brindisi. 9   Oakeshott (1979) 2. 10   Ibid. 11  Although there seems to have been no recognisable S.I. r-f reported in NSc between 1876 and 1904. 12   Reinach (1891) vii. 13   Reinach (1891) ix-x. 7 8

  Furtwängler (1893) 148-9.  Trendall (1990) 217. Excavation reports AAVV, Sibari Suppl. to NSc 1969-74. 16  Villard (1989) 179. 17  Although not on later Apulian. 18   Furtwängler does not state that this is only on Campanian vases. 14 15

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The 1870s until the 1900s However, Furtwängler saw an individual touch in the style and ‘typology’ of the figures on the South Italian vases which shows itself from the very beginning of their production. He gives as an example the difference between the Attic and South Italian bearded Silenos. He said, ‘Although they cannot compete with their Attic prototypes in beauty and refinement of drawing and technique, they have a rough force all their own.’

unpublished)22 from Kertsch in St.Petersburg which shows in a striking manner how closely Tarentine work clings to Attic of the end of 5th century. Both groups of vases, the early Lower Italian and the Tarentine (Apulian), are merely off shoots of Attic art transplanted into new soil, he said: The subjects of the earlier group, such as the various Argonaut pictures and the Rape of the Leukippidai are first derived from the circle of Polygnotan painting but subjects from the Attic drama soon make their appearance and afford the strongest confirmation of the essentially Attic character of these vases; this dramatic material is brought straight over from Athens fresh and undiluted.23

Refering to closeness of shape, he gives the example of a series of bell-kraters which ‘Only the most exact and careful observation of technical and stylistic points can distinguish from the corresponding Attic kraters of the period 440-430 BC’. He gives as ‘an excellent example, though not the earliest’ the krater with the ‘Expiation of Orestes’ (Louvre), which he dates to about 420 BC.19 He also points out that there is an exact akinness between the South Italian frieze of the Argonauts hydria (Cabinet des Médailles), and the Attic Zeus and Io hydria (Berlin 3164).

Although other scholars refer to the many drama scenes on South Italian vases, Furtwängler was the first to state that the tragedies of Euripides held the chief place in the Tarentine group’s subjects. ‘Even the Sicilians, we know from reliable tradition (Plutarch, Nikias 29), were enthusiastic admirers of Euripides as early as 412 BC, and eagerly learned by heart fragments of his dramas brought to them by Athenian deserters. The facts touched upon so far seem to me to be capable of the following explanation: with the founding of Thurii, Attic ceramic art was transplanted into the district. Its exotic development began c.440.’24

Furtwängler then refers to several amphorae with volute handles to be named in this connection, especially one in the Jatta Collection in Ruvo which, on one side, has an amazonomachy which is very close in its composition and motifs to the shield relief of the Parthenos, and on the other side, the Rape of the daughters of Leukippos. These are the same as those on Attic vases of circa 440 BC derived from Polygnotan prototypes, as is another volute amphora showing Phineus and the Argonauts in the same collection.

Furtwängler believed that the products of the new workshops were distributed not only in the inland district of Thurii and Siris, but also in a north-easterly direction, towards Apulia. Then came the contest with Tarentum and the treaty which found outward expression in the establishment of a common colony, Herakleia. He stated:

As to the shape of the kolonnettenvasen (column-krater) Furtwängler states that it was taken over by Lower Italy straight from Athens in the middle of the 5th century.20 These vases are found in Lucania (e.g. Pomarico, Anzi etc) and also Apulia, especially Ruvo. He said:

I think it probable that the manufacture of vases was continued in the latter city and spread thence to Tarentum, where it would flourish greatly owing to the wealth and power of the city and thus gradually come to supplant the import trade from Herakleia, at least so far as Apulia was concerned. The Herakleian potteries thus lost their importance, their wares (the later Lucanian vases) became poorer, and assumed a more and more exclusively local character.

Technically and stylistically they form a preparatory stage to the later Lucanian vases, which rapidly assume a strongly local stamp and are hardly ever found in Apulia, which has a special vase manufacure of its own, i.e. Tarantine. It cannot be doubted that these earlier Lower Italy vases belong to the fifth-century for their existence can only be understood on the supposition that they are nearly contemporary with the parallel productions of Attic art. The real Apulian, i.e. Tarentine class develops rather later, but it still belongs to the fifth-century, its nearest analogues are the Attic vases of the period after 430BC.21

The export trade of Athens itself was naturally materially injured by the existence of this new centre of vase-painting in Southern Italy. After 400 BC no Attic vases of late style seem to have come to Apulia, although the export to Campania continued to flourish for some time.25

Furtwängler pointed out the conspicuous instance of the occurrence on the volute-amphora (St. Petersburg 523) where the Gigantomachy is treated as on the shield of the Parthenos, and the drawing of the wavy hair, the ornaments on the drapery etc are plain echoes of those Attic prototypes. In this connection he refers to the fragments of an unusually large and splendid Attic bell-krater (then

Furtwängler also deduced that the reason why no Attic vases of the later style made after 400BC had been found  The Baksy krater, excavated in 1882 by Professor N.P. Kondakov of Odessa University. Published by Shefton (1982) 149-181 & (1992) 241251. 23   Furtwängler (1893) 151. 24   Ibid. 25   Furtwängler (1893) 151-2. 22

  He cites three good examples in Berlin: 3179, 3180, 3182. Also a quantity in Naples & Ruvo. 20   Furtwängler (1893) 150. 21   Furtwängler (1893) 150. 19

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery in Apulia was due to the effect on the Athenian export trade from the new workshops at Thurii and Tarentum, ‘although the export to Campania continued to flourish for some time. Thus the attempt of Athens to found an independent colony at Thurii was prejudicial in this particular as in others to the Mother City. Athens gave of her strength and received nothing in return.’26 Furtwängler finally sums up:

Among his many works on vases and other antiquities, Furtwängler produced one other article on South Italian pottery: Ein Wirtshaus auf einem italischen Vasenbilde,32 publishing a unique red-figure nestoris with a scene of a charioteer and the word XΕΝΟΝ.33

Nevertheless for a right appreciation of the power and significance of Attic art as it was when Pheidias had impressed upon it the mark of his genius, the history of its triumphal entrance into Magna Graecia will always be of the highest importance. We have only touched upon some of the chief features of the history, I will close with one more example. The famous Ficoroni Cista in Rome by a master of Praeneste is the genuine offspring of the Polygnotan circle. This is evident from the separate motifs and their details although there are many concessions to Latin taste the cista must be of nearly the same date as the vases. The great creations of the brilliant Attic period are like suns, each the centre of a multiude of smaller stars on which they pour light and life. The art of Athens in the fifth century was as far-reaching and widespread as her empire.27

Giovanni Patroni (1869-1951?),34 was the Lanzi of the late nineteenth century. He sought the true origins of vases from South Italy by studying the intrinsic evidence of the vases, and the chronological evidence of excavations. In his La ceramica antica nell’ Italia meridionale of 1897, he explained his new methods. He held that an important part of the study had been ignored: although the facts of the strong influence of Greek pottery and iconography had been long established, the indigenous aspects of Italiote vases had not been recognised. Working on this subject for many years and in a field that was little cultivated, he put into evidence new and important facts, and the results of his research. Patroni states that the prime source for his research was the collection of the Bourbon Museum in Naples because the vases were all discovered in South Italy and remained local to their find spot.35 This gave it more value than other collections because it was the only one which had been formed and had remained in the South of Italy,36 and where there is a wide representation of three regions which had their own ceramic production. He illustrated his work with an early form of photographic plates, and the majority of the vases had never been previously published.

Patroni

Finally, this revelation, which had been within the reach of any scholar since the 1760s who had bothered to juxtapose Hamilton’s ‘Nolan’ and ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases and read the differences and close similarities, had now been deciphered and published by Furtwängler, and, ironically, as an appendage to a book on a different subject. The foundations were now laid for scholars such as Beazley, Tillyard, Moon and Trendall to build on.

Patroni distinguished three principle regions: Campania, Lucania, and Puglia (Apulia). He said there were many centres of production and listed the main fabrics of Campania to be Cuma, Saticula (which was later denied as a fabric by Beazley) and Abella, but puts a question-

Von Bothmer observed ‘Furtwängler’s Berlin vase catalogue brings us to the threshold of what might be styled the century of attributions’.28 It was Furtwängler who first showed that certain vases thought to be Attic were South Italian. Beazley believed ‘Furtwängler’s 1886 classification of Italiote vases in Berlin was still beyond most museums in the 1920s.’29 However, his personal attempts at attribution were rather unsuccessful: Hoffmann cites Furtwängler’s ‘fifty odd’ attributions (compared to Beazley’s 30,000) as being two-thirds wrong.30

BC, may have caused a hiatus in its ability to export painted pottery to Magna Graecia. However, MacDonald (1982) 113 said: ‘A review of late fifth-century settlement contexts shows that Attic pottery remained popular among the living’. In Corinth this is largely based on the agora well deposit dated to between 460-420 BC and the later south stoa well deposit (although this contained a much larger proportion of Corinthian r-f). Alternatively, some cite the evidence of the excavations in Corinth’s North Cemetery (Luce (1930), MacDonald (1981 & 82), Palmer (1964)) to prove a drop in Attic pottery export in the second half of the 5th century, but Corinth does not necessarily give an accurate picture, due to its particular ‘aggressive hostility’ to Athens pointed out by MacDonald (1982) 113. Also see Palmer’s b-f theory cited supra n.54. In southern Italy Attic imports dropped sharply around the Gulf of Taranto, but increased at Ruvo. MacDonald (1981) 160 puts the former down to local schools capturing the market, and the latter to Ruvo being on the sea-route to the northern Adriatic market. MacDonald (1981) 159 gives the decline in numbers of Attic pottery found in late 5th century Italian sites as proof of the reduction in potters and painters working in Athens, but as the suitability of S.I. burial techniques to the survival of pottery meant that more Attic vases survived in S.I. than Attica, perhaps pottery production did not decline, but the vases have not survived due to not being exported. 32   Furtwängler (1913) 130-4. 33   Ibid, fig. 1. 34   ‘P’ not yet reached in DBI. 35   Patroni (1897) vi. 36   Most others had either been dispersed to collections in Rome, or gone to Britain, Germany and France.

Arthur Milchhöfer’s article ‘Zur jüngeren Attischen Vasenmalerei’ of 1894 expounded a widely accepted theory at the time, namely that Attic vase painting ended when Athens lost the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. But Furtwängler disproved this by pointing out that late Attic vases found in Alexandria proved that Attic painted pottery was being produced through the majority of the 4th century.31   Furtwängler (1893) 152.   Furtwängler (1893) 152. 28  Von Bothmer (1987) 197. 29   Beazley (1926) 293. 30   Hoffmann (1979) 65. 31   Furtwängler (1904) 205-7. Even so, the effect on Greek shipping of the Sicilian Expedition disaster, and the crushing of Athens in 404 26 27

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The 1870s until the 1900s mark against Capua and Neapolis.37 The recognition of a fabric of Paestum was largely due to Patroni’s early work on the style of Asteas and Python, and he placed Paestan pottery into two periods: that of Asteas and Python which derived ultimately from Apulian; and the second period as the development of a purely local Paestan style.

display of eight Asteas vases at the British Museum, and returned to the subject in his History of Greek Pottery of 1905.45 However, it was Patroni who first properly laid out the analysis of the style of Asteas in his ‘La ceramica’ of 1897.46 The study of vases with the signatures Asteas and Python led Patroni to the decision that it was one of the workshops where more than anywhere else a tradition of style was born and kept within its original characteristics. Patroni states that the finding of a workshop with two named artists was the one breakthrough that paved the way to the study of all other workshops. He said:

Patroni looked at Campanian red-figure vases and noted the problem of how much was the work of Greek colonists and to what degree it was a local product, with indigenous characters wearing Oscan armour and women in rural costume. The biggest number of representations of this type were in the necropolis of Cumae38 and illustrated in volume V of the Tischbein collection.39

It is nearly on the border of Lucania and Campania but the potters have little or nothing to do with production that is typical of Lucania, except perhaps that this was the means by which in the last days of red-figure the influence of Apulia made itself felt in a very small way, and in Paestum was limited to the imitation of the shapes of the vases.47

Another problem was whether the painted tombs that had been discovered were native or some other form of nonGreek sites (such as the tomb of the Dancers of Ruvo discovered in 1833 or certain tombs at Capua), or if they were in Greek sites occupied by the Oscans (like Cumae and Paestum). Their figurative themes of rural women and Samnite armour evoke the Italic world in a similar way to those painted on Campanian vases.

Tillyard believed there was a small local Campanian fabric at Saticula, which produced only bell-kraters,48 which, he said:

The location of workshops was a subject that underwent important changes in Patroni’s time. Patroni observes that, next to Paestum, the three other large stylistic regions [Campania, Apulia and Lucania] rapidly populated themselves with a series of workshops, the discovery of the existence of which relied on the luck of the excavators (and the grouped provenance of certain works). However, the lack of the ten or so workshops that one would have thought would aid identification has left us with several different doctrinal positions: a ‘nationalist’ conception puts quintessential production in the indigenous sites, often far from the coast.40 This was the main direction that research on South Italian vases took for the rest of the century.

One can conveniently call it Saticula, without committing oneself to the belief that it actually came from that place. Hope vases, Nos. 312-314, pls.41 and 42, are examples. They are near to Attic, perhaps the work of Attic artists settled in Campania.49 Beazley rejected Patroni and Macchioro’s claim for a ‘Saticulan’ fabric based on a collection of vases found at Sant’Agata de Goti (the site of ancient Saticula, c.12 miles east of Capua, but separated from it by mountains), which were purchased for the collection of Prince Czartoryski at Castle Goluchow, near Pleszew in Poland. After visiting Poland to catalogue this collection Beazley said:

In 1864 H. Hirzel had published ‘Vaso di Pesto Ercole Furente’, the newly found Herakles krater signed by Asteas,41 comparing it to the other four vases previously found bearing the same signature. In 1865 Wolfgang Helbig (1839-1915)42 published Dipinti di Pesto43, in which he discussed Oscan and Campanian mixture or influence on Paestan painting. Hermann Winnefeld (1862-1918) wrote a study of Asteas in the Bonner Studien 189044 and added some more vases. Then, in 1896, H.B. Walters mounted a

That vases were made at Saticula I will not absolutely deny, but the vases which count as Saticulan are ninetenths not Italiote at all, but Attic of that deplorable period, the early part of the fourth century. The remaining tenth consists of odds and ends - an Attic vase of the Kerch style - another of the fifth century - a nondescript Italiote or so. It is time the word Saticula took in collections and text books a more modest place.50

  Patroni (1897) 79. 38   Patroni (1897) 87-9. 39  Tischbein (1795) pl. 60, 61, 69, and notably 100. 40   Patroni (1897) 2-33, 114-5, 130-3. 41   Hirzel (1864) 323-342. Extensive searches have found no biography for H. Hirzel, not even a first name. Not in EHCA or NDB. Oakeshott (1979) 4 said ‘Hirtzel’. 42   EHCA: 576-7. Lehmann (1989) 7-65. Margueritta Guarducci (1992) 307-27 critisises Helbig’s work and gives the case for him being involved in commissioning and selling forgeries over a long period in collaboration with the Roman antiquities dealer and restorer, Francesco Martinetti (1833-95). Their most notorious artifact being La Fibula Prenestina which appeared in 1887. 43   Helbig (1865) 262-295. 44  Winnefeld (1890) 166-75. 37

Referring to a vase very like Attic but seeming to be Italiote, Beazley said, ‘[This vase] would no doubt be  Walters (1896) 72 & (1905) 178.   Patroni (1897) 62-78. Trendall (1936) 5. 47   Patroni (1897) 79. 48   He does not give a reason for this. Presumably only bell-kraters had been found up till then. I can find no further publication on Tillyard’s Saticula bell-krater fabric. 49  Tillyard (1923) 18-19. 50   Beazley (1928) 75-76. 45 46

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery called Saticulan in many museums’.51 Trendall was still refuting a Saticulan fabric in 1990: he said, ‘A group of kraters imported by the Campanian city of Saticula (S. Agata dei Goti) were at first thought to be South Italian and indeed gave rise to the so-called fabric of Saticula, but are now recognized as Attic.52

scenes.61 However, the similarities with one frieze would seem insufficient to establish a connection.62 One other major theme of Patroni’s 1897 work was his belief that all South Italian vase-painting had a funerary or after-life basis and showed not only figured themes but types which render the objects inappropriate for everyday usage. Even in the seemingly trivial scenes; the domestic themes of the Attic pottery are replaced by erotic scenes where all the amorous tributes and gifts converge towards the woman; at the time of betrothal, as a spouse, and at death. In this context the number of objects preserved or ‘offerings’ have a symbolic funereal value even amongst the mythological scenes. Equally the Dionysian themes have a funereal character. As for the clearly expressed myths, they all make allusions to funerals. He said:

Trendall said that the credit for establishing the existence of a fifth-century vase fabric in South Italy is due in the first instance to Furtwängler,53 who noticed that certain vases thought to be Attic had characteristics that differed from the true Athenian product. Patroni laid down the lines for a general classification of South Italian vases with acknowledgments to Furtwängler, and these were later refined by Watzinger, Tillyard, Beazley, and Moon.54 Also by Macchioro,55 but his work was discredited by so many inaccuracies.

It is false to believe that so many inexplicable things, so much caprice, so much arbitrariness, altered and confused representations, pasticci appear on the Italiote vases which isn’t even understood by those who made them themselves. Yes, the Italiote vases are free and complex because their art is not spontaneous art which narrates for the sake of narration or represent for the sake of representation but a symbolic art.63

It must have come as a surprise to them that, despite the prominence of Campanian wares in their studies and the near proximity of Sicily to Campania, as well as the importance of such cities and sites as Neapolis, Cumae, Avella, Paestum and the supposed Saticula, it became evident that, on grounds of style, Early South Italian descended from two groups originating in Lucania and Apulia.

Commenting on this, Trendall pointed out that the Dionysian themes are just as much evocations of wine or theatrical drama as they are allusions to an eschatology founded on Mysteries. The vases themselves are made just as much for daily use as for tombs and the scenes of daily life, especially scenes of women. As regards the female heads, the majority of those on small vases have neither particular religious nor mythological significance.64

The first group, from Lucania, led by the Pisticci56 and Amykos Painters, is thought to have been the slightly earlier of the two. Trendall said the style of the Pisticci Painter is so close to that of Attic painters of about 450 BC that he must have almost certainly been himself a Greek trained in Athens.57 He painted pursuit scenes and departing warriors, libations and offerings at herms.58 The majority of his work is on bell-kraters identical to those from Attica of the same date. His women wear a diadem.

In 1920, Carlo Albizzati (1880-1950)65 challenged Patroni’s conclusions by showing that a number of non-funereal vases exist (e.g. at Paestum)66 and showed that one must make a distinction between realist and idealist funereal worship; that the Dionysian scenes without doubt feature the Elysian life but nothing indicates those that figure in the bacchic Elysian life of which the Orphic texts speak. On the other hand he does admit that Orphism is present in the eschatological themes. Albizzati believed that the mystique surrounding Italiote vase-painting themes should be played down and the search for funereal interpretations, particularly in regard to Apulian, should be minimised.67

The Amykos Painter painted in a very similar style, also on many bell-kraters, but his women wear a sakkos, and he is partial to silens and maenads.59 His libation scenes show Samnite warriors (presumably for the local market) and he was the first to include rocky landscapes. The second group, from Apulia, was led by the Sisyphus Painter and the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl.60 Trendall suggests this school was strongly influenced by sculpture, in particular by what he calls ‘The Phigaleian Frieze’ (Bassae), as shown by their many centauromachy   Ibid.  Tendall (1990) 218. 53  Trendall (1974) 1. 54  Watzinger (1899b), Tillyard (1923), Beazley (1928) 68-78, Moon (1929) 30-49. 55   Macchioro (1911) 187 & (1912) 163-188. 56   Named after the find-spot, is called by Trendall (1974) 3 ‘The first Italiote artist.’ 57  Trendall (1974) 3. 58   E.g. Agrigento, Giudice 590, Berne 12522 and Trieste 1694, Trendall (1967) pl. 2:5-6, pl. 4:2 & pl. 6:4. 59   E.g. Minneapolis 09.10 displays all three, Trendall (1967) pl. 9:5-6. 60  Trendall (1974) 14, again makes a bold statement: ‘The earliest Apulian vase-painter.’ 51 52

  E.g. Louvre G 570, Trendall (1978) pl. 6:3.  Also, the Bassae frieze was in such a remote area that it is unlikely that these Apulian vase-painters ever visited it, and being of such small size and placed high up, it could not have been studied in detail. 63   Patroni (1897) 172. 64  Trendall (1978) xlvii. 65  Author of Vasi antichi dipinti del Vaticano (1924). 66  Albizzati (1920) 212. 67  Albizzati (1920) 149-212. Villard (1989) 93. 61 62

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The 1870s until the 1900s Macchioro

Walters

‘Macchioro, the most systematic student of South Italian vases.’ 68

H.B. Walters, assistant keeper in the Greek and Roman department of the British Museum, first recognised the style of Asteas while cataloguing the B.M. vase collection (items F 149-156) in the early 1890s.78 Patroni then placed Asteas in Paestum (at that time a disputed fabric).79 A dispute then followed over B.M. F156,80 a hydria with a Dionysiac revel scene, which Walters had assigned to Asteas, but Patroni placed in Cumae, although close in style to Asteas. However, Trendall later recognised in this vase a completely new artist and he made it the name-vase of the Revel Painter, not from Paestum, but Campania.81 Walters still followed the century-old (and now abandoned) logic that vases found at a certain location were probably made there: he said in the introduction to volume IV of the B.M. Vase Catalogue (Vases of the Later Period):

Vittorio Macchioro (1880-1958),69 was a scholar in the mould of the 18th century Italian savants, in that he wrote exclusively on South Italian pottery and argued its independence from direct Attic influence, and stated that Ruvo was the father of all South Italian vase-painting except Saticula.70 Patroni had divided Apulian into two groups: Ruvo and Canosa. Macchioro developed this in his ‘Per la storia della Ceramografia italiota cronologia e prolegomeni’ of 1912,71 proposing five phases in the development of Apulian at Ruvo: between about 450 and 400 BC = Ruvo 1; 400-350 BC = Ruvo 2; 350-300 BC = Ruvo 3; 300-250 BC = Ruvo 4; 250-200 BC = Ruvo 5. He also lists two phases at Canosa running parallel with phases three and four at Ruvo, circa 350-250 BC.72 His phases are fairly accurate for Ruvo 1 & 2, but by the time he reaches Ruvo 4 & 5 his dating has been universally denounced. Trendall said: ‘His attributions have little value … and some are not Paestan at all.’73

In this group we may indicate a twofold division: (1) F 1-36, vases found in Greece proper, Asia Minor, or Africa, and therefore presumably of Athenian manufacture; (2) F 37-148, vases found in Southern Italy, and therefore probably of local make.82 Hartwig

He split Lucanian into two groups: Anzi and Armento, which, he believed, developed independently, and he ignores any possiblility of other kiln sites in Lucania. Paestan and Cumaean he states are actually descendents of Apulian (Ruvo 3). Trendall, criticising Macchioro’s system of regions, said that using a geographical basis for provenances is rather rigid, and that most have rightly taken style rather than provenance as a criterion.74

Paul Hartwig (1859-1919), after studying archaeology at Heidelberg and Munich, became a collector and trader in antiquities and publisher of collections of vases. His speciality was red-figure cups, particularly their attribution. In 1893 he published Die griechischen Meisterschalen der Blütezeit des strengen rotfigurigen Stiles, giving names to anonymous artists, e.g. ‘Der Meister mit der Ranke’ to a cup artist who drew tendrils. He attributed eight cups to this painter, but they were later assigned by Beazley to Douris. Hartwig’s contribution to vase study (although his theories went out of fashion and by 1902 he was being openly criticised by Pottier83) was his determination that all the vase masters, particularly his special favourites, cup painters, should be given personalities by naming the unsigning artists by peculiarities in their work. This meant that all vases subsequently discovered could either be attributed to a known painter, or that a previously unknown artist could be isolated and given a name.84 Like Hamilton before him, he sold his collection of vases (to Johns Hopkins University) and started to collect again.85

Macchioro’s classification of South Italian vases in the Naples Museum was being arranged in the 1920s. He attempted to classify by locality, but the provenances of most of the South Italian vases at the museum were unknown, so this was an impossible task. Macchioro stated that what was needed were sufficient numbers of provenanced vases to come to a decision.75 Moon cites Macchioro’s inconsistency in classifying a group of four vases by the same artist: three under Ruvo I, but the fourth under Anzi II. Further, he lists the same vase in two different classes.76 Trendall said, ‘Macchioro tried to map out the new territory, but his frontiers have so often been proved inaccurate or arbitrary.’77

 Tillyard (1923) 11.   DBI, vol. 67: 32-35. 70   (1912) 167. Campanian ware troubled Macchioro, with its strong Attic colonies. It was not a name used by Macchioro, he listed much of it under ‘Saticula’, and preferred to concentrate on Apulia. 71   Macchioro (1912a) 21-36, (1912b) 163-188. 72   Macchioro (1912b) 168-171, 188. 73  Trendall (1987) 8. 74  Trendall (1934) 179. However, Trendall based his later major works, LCS, RVAp and RVP on regions. 75   Macchioro (1911) 187. 76   Moon (1929) 32. 77  Trendall (1935) 35. 68 69

 Walters (1896) iv: 72-78.   Patroni (1897) xix. 80   LCS 211.61. 81  Trendall (1935) 36, also (1989) 158. 82  Walters (1896) 15. 83   Pottier (1902) 19-36. 84  This method was not new, it had long been used for Old Master paintings, e.g. ‘The Master of L’. It was later refined and perfected by Beazley, but whether as a direct result of Hartwig’s work has been argued (see infra Beazley chapter VI). 85   Graef & Langlotz (1925) vol. I. iii. 78 79

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery After Furtwängler and Patroni and before Beazley and Trendall: the 1900s

Apulian.’94 Surely Ely must have had in mind the works of such artists as the Sisyphus Group, the Tarporley Group and the Darius and Underworld Painters, and not the huge bulk of later mass-produced, often near-identical pottery that was to fill museum store-rooms.

Following Furtwängler and Patroni, most authors of vase books met the challenge of South Italian vases by adding a piece at the conclusion of their works, although being careful to record their reservations, possibly to cover themselves from any academic disapproval.

He holds Lucanian ware in low esteem: ‘The Lucanian includes one form of vase peculiar to itself, a clumsy imitation of bronze with a disc on the handles. The Lucanian style of painting is distinguished by large heads with staring eyes, ungraceful pose, [and] by awkward drapery.’95 Of Campanian ware he said, ‘The most interesting feature is the fondness for simplicity and graceful lines.’96 He anticipates a modern debate97 when he said of Campanian ware, ‘In these, as in so many other classes of pottery, we may trace the influence of metal technique.’98 Ely gives us an unconscious insight into the solid, unchanging displays of Victorian museums when he was confident to put into print several remarks such as: ‘This vase can be seen in the British Museum, Fourth Vase-room, case 55.’

Ely Talfourd Ely86 made an interesting interjection into late nineteenth-century South Italian vase study. In his address to the Society of Antiquaries in 1895 on ‘The Vases of Magna Graecia’, Ely put forward several interesting points.87 First he decried the complete lack of interest in pottery from Southern Italy since the discoveries at Vulci, apparently ignoring the extensive work on this subject by Gerhard and Brunn and the new work just published by Furtwängler.88 He said: This neglect of the works of the decedence may, as M. Reinach remarks, have gone too far, and it may be reasonable to expect a reaction, though, as yet, it must be confessed, there are no signs of it. Till the great discovery of the Etruscan graves at Vulci, a discovery that marks an epoch in the history of archaeological science, the vases of South Italy formed the staple of publications on ancient ceramics.89

Horner Susan Horner seems to have been the first woman to publish on South Italian vases.99 Her Greek Vases, Historical and Descriptive of 1897 devotes a large portion of a chapter entitled ‘The Fourth Period – the decline in the manufacture of Greek vases’ to the vases of Magna Graecia.100 She said that Hellenic influence on native Italian pottery may be traced to as early as the 6th century,101 and considered Tarentum to be the basis for the introduction of Greek vase painting into southern Italy. She states:

He states that South Italian vases are important for the historical background that they give to ‘The proud communities that threatened to eclipse their parent Greece,’ but of which we possess such scant documentation, except ‘An allusion in Herodotus, a few words from Diodorus or Polybius, a doubtful story in Athenaeus.’90 ‘The representation upon (the vases) must be of interest to all who care to gain a notion of the habits and thoughts of communities whose history has almost perished.’91

The vases of Tarentum being chiefly intended for ornament or for the tombs of the wealthier citizens were of great size…the simplicity and purity of composition of the Greeks was replaced by a desire to produce a general effect of wealth of ornament, rich costumes, sensational scenes and superfluity of decoration, frequently very beautiful, although the work is careless. Facility of hand, so remarkable in the Italian, led to a desire for quantity rather than quality.102

Ely’s unusual view for his time was that Apulian vases were superior to those from the other regions.92 He said: ‘The chief class of South Italian ware, [is] the Apulian … the other two classes recognised, the Lucanian and the Campanian, are of less importance’93 and, ‘By far the most important of the three schools of Italiote ceramics was the

She noted that South Italian vase-painters abandoned the panels in which the principal subject was painted, and scenes including a great number of figures covered the whole body of the vase. A kind of conventional perspective was attempted by figures supposed to be in the distance

  No dates can be found for Ely, and he is not in DNB. However, he was secretary to University College London Council in 1876, and published Manual of Archaeology in New York in 1890. 87   Ely (1896). 88  However, he then goes on to quote all three. 89   Ely (1896) 115. 90   Ely (1896) 113. 91   Ely (1896) 116. 92  The vase-shapes and vase-painting of Campania were closer to Attic originals than other S.I. fabrics, and therefore generally considered superior. 93   Ely (1896) 118. This strongly contrasts with Beazley’s later view that Apulian vase-painting was poor and that the few masterpieces originated in Lucania, see infra p.133. On the antiquities market the mass produced Apulian wares have always attracted lower prices than the other two regions. 86

  Ely (1896) 119.   Ely (1896) 118-9. 96   Ely (1896) 119. 97   See Vickers & Gill (1994). 98   Ely (1896) 119. 99  And seemingly only the second to write on Greek vases in general, after Jane Harrison, one of the first women scholars at Cambridge, who published Greek Vase Painting (1894), and the Art Magazine series, ‘The Judgement of Paris (on Greek vases)’; The Myth of the Nightingale on Greek Vase-Painting’; ‘Myths of the Dawn on Greek vase-Painting’ all published between 1882 and 1894. 100   Horner (1897) 99-129. 101   Ibid. 101. 102   Ibid. 103-4. 94 95

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The 1870s until the 1900s being placed above those in the foreground, though of the same size, whilst lines were traced marking the ground or different planes of the composition. She said that artists returned to a lavish use of white paste, both on females and on the decorations, and the colours red, yellow, purple and crimson were laid on the black glaze. Figures were no longer only drawn in profile, but in front or threequarters.103

that the predominant vase types were lekythoi, amphorae, alabastra, schalen (cups? or shell-shapes?), kantharoi and kalathoi.109 Leroux By the early 20th century few major vase collections had been left unstudied and in 1912 Gabriel Leroux (18791915), a member of the École française d’Athènes, travelled to Spain. He catalogued the ‘Vases Grecs et Italio-Grecs’ in the Archaeological Museum at Madrid. In comparison to the collections in other capital cities, Madrid’s is not vast, but it contains a large proportion of Italiote red-figure, a number of which were, according to the museum labels, found in underground chamber-tombs in the vicinity of Madrid.110 Trendall said that many of the vases had been incorrectly classified, quite a number of early South Italian being listed as Attic.111

Horner states that Apulia imported the styles of Tarantum. She remarks that signatures of artists are rarely found on Italian vases and she briefly mentions ‘Assteas’ as an example, but she is more interested in Dasimos of Apulia, who she said, ‘was noted for his florid work’ (an artist who signed some of his vases, but who, from Horner’s time, was already overshadowed by the scholarly obsession with Asteas).104 Watzinger

Leroux’s introduction, rather than vase scholarship, concentrates on the history of the collection and where and how the vases were obtained, the collectors and prices paid.112 He was one of the early users of good quality photographs in preference to prints, and his illustrations are still sufficient to this day for a good overview of the Madrid collection.113

Carl Watzinger (1877-1948) wrote his dissertation Studien zur unteritalischen Vasenmalerei at Bonn in 1899, exploring the possible reasons for the choice of subject matter of South Italian vase-painting in different regions. Villard stated in 1989 that missing the importance of theatrical tragedy in inspiring most South Italian painted vases from tombs, particularly those from Apulia, limited Watzinger’s dissertation.105

The medium of photography came late to the illustration of books on vases, it was first used for the photolithographs of A. de Longpérier, illustrating the catalogue of the Musée de Napoléon III, Paris 1868-74,114 although the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica in Rome were employing the photographer Gustav Reiger to take pictures of excavated vases from the 1850s,115 and William Fox Talbot’s ‘calotypes’ process (after the Greek kalos) was used to record classical antiquities as early as the early 1840s.116 However, engraving continued to be the standard method of illustrating books on vases until the first decade of the 20th century, superceded only when advances in photography, and the means to mass reproduce photographs in publications, became sufficiently improved to match the fine detail of engraving. Beazley said, ‘The ideal publication of a vase is not a photograph, nor a series of photographs; but a series of photographs accompanied by

In 1903 he became director of the sculpture galleries at Berlin Museum, and in 1904 Privatdozent106 at Berlin University. He published extensively on ancient Palestine and Syria, but his pottery work was almost exclusively on Italiote wares. In his contribution to Furtwängler’s Griechische Vasenmalerei: ‘Volutenkrater in Neapel. Opfer für Dionysos-Kentaurenkampf,’107 he laid out his idea of the history of the development of South Italian red-figure from its beginnings in the mid 5th century to the emergence of distinct regional styles in the second quarter of the 4th century. He also challenged Tillyard’s 1923 isolation of an early group of Paestan vase-painters that predated Asteas.108 He excavated extensively at Taranto and produced De Vasculis Pictis Tarentinis in 1899, a study of red-figure and other pottery found there. He compared Taranto wares to the vase shapes and paintings of other parts of Apulia. He confirmed the general belief that Taranto had been the largest producer of red-figure pottery in the early period of production in Apulia: a rival to Thurii in Lucania. He found

 Watzinger (1899a) 5.   Neither Leroux, nor the labels on the scale models of the tombs in the Madrid Museum itself, give a date for these tombs, but they are displayed in the Imperial Roman Spain room, which would appear to suggest that these vases were brought to Spain sometime during or after the Hannibalic War of 237-218 BC, making them second-hand when they were interred. Further, neither Madrid CVA, Leroux or Trias make any mention of find-sites near Madrid. 111  Trendall (1985) 32. 112   E.g. the collection of 29 vases of José Ignacio Miró purchased in 1875 for 12,000 pesetas, and the Cette collection of circa 300 vases with some other antiquities for 40,000 pesetas in the same year. Leroux (1912) xv. 113   Leroux’s numbering of the Madrid vases was so established that by the time Madrid CVA was published, it was used as a secondary numbering system for each vase. 114  The process of transferring a photographic negative on to a stone plate coated with bichromated gelatine for use in mass reproduction. 115   Jung (1996) 321-32., 116   Lyons (2005) 33. 109 110

  Ibid. 101-2.   Ibid. 105. 105   Villard (1989) 178. This is clearly not entirely correct, many Apulian vases have purely funerary scenes such as a man standing in a naiskos, or mourners by a shrine, and only a minority of scenes on Campanian vases have theatre scenes. 106   Unestablished university lecturer. 107   In Furtwängler and Reichhold (1932) vol. 3:343-50. 108   Ibid. 103 104

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery a careful drawing. The camera is always stupid if always honest … yet it often gives false information’.117 Beazley learned the art of tracing vases from Karl Reichhold on a trip to Munich in 1908. After tracing a vase he would ‘work it up’ into a drawing.118 Beazley also mentions a photographic devise called the cycolograph: a contrivance whereby vase and camera rotate in unison. If the body of the vase were cylindrical the result might be almost faultless, but it is never absolutely cylindrical, so that you must make allowance for the lower part of the picture being a little out of focus. One or two of the reproductions will be not from photographs but from drawings, in which the style is always a little altered.119

  Beazley (1913) 143.  Von Bothmer in Kurtz (1983) 7. 119   Beazley (1989) 26. 117 118

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Chapter V The 20th Century Beazley

Referring to one class of South Italian vases, chiefly neckamphorae, Beazley said, ‘Made by barbarians, probably in Campania in the latter part of the fifth century…and his [the artist’s] figure-work is marvellously crude.’9 He suggested there was only one group of Italiote vasepainters who produced most of the masterpieces. He said this group is described as ‘early Lucanian’ or ‘early South Italian’ and leads on through a Lucano-Apulian phase to the so-called Apulian style of the Darius vase and those vases that ‘cluster’ around it. ‘This is the line of primogeniture in Italiote vase-painting: our group has other off-shoots - ‘middle’ and ‘late Lucanian’- but those are provincial conservative punies.’10

Lover of Greece, is this the richest store You bring us, - withered leaves and dusty lore, And broken vases widowed of their wine, To brand you pedant while you stand divine? 1 John Davidson Beazley (1885-1970) was probably the most important vase scholar ever, arguably more crucial than Gerhard,2 although the indefatigable Gerhard came on the scene, by chance, at a very crucial time: the discoveries at Vulci. Their two approaches were different: Gerhard was an organiser of societies and groups, of debates and correspondence, who urged enthusiasts to share their findings; Beazley worked for long periods alone, forming his own theories and then publishing.3 He used a system of connoisseurship similar to that used by Giovanni Morelli for identifying Italian painters by looking closely at small details in the paintings (such as eyes and hands which artists tend to paint to a pattern in every picture) and adapted it to the examination of vase-painting. Ashmole said, ‘The linear system lends itself more readily than brush-stokes to comparatively simple formulae [including] details of drapery.’4 Whether Beazley consciously copied Morelli is debatable. Kurtz5 and Boardman6 show that Beazley’s methods bear a close relationship to those of Morelli. However, Dyfri Williams has argued that it was Paul Hartwig who began giving names to unsigned vasepainters in 1893, who influenced Beazley, and traces the idea of attributing vases to ‘masters’ back to its origins in Winckelmann.7

Beazley holds late Apulian in such distaste that he regards looking at an earlier Apulian alabastron as a relief from looking at, ‘or even thinking about late Apulian’! He said: ‘It is really time vase-painting ceased.’ 11 After a page or so of confusing digression to Attic vase styles, Beazley returns to the Italiote masterpiece period and dates it by naming the Sisyphus Painter as one of its artists, and dating one of his vases to the last twenty years of the fifth century.12 Later Trendall said: Since Beazley’s day, however, a quite remarkable number of late Apulian vases has come to light, especially by the Underworld, Baltimore, Arpi and White Saccos Painters, and these have given us a much better understanding of the later phases of this fabric,

Beazley showed little admiration for South Italian vases, although this did not stop him studying them. Spivey, referring to the recent attempts by scholars to record and publish all existing figured South Italian vases, said ‘Before Beazley’s work, only vase pictures of a certain quality were considered, now the whole craft is lifted to a position it cannot sustain.’8 Spivey is surely referring to the impossibility of tracing and recording the hundreds of Apulian and other South Italian vases appearing every year on the open market from illicit excavation in Italy.

  Beazley (1928) 77.   Beazley (1928) 72. 11   From Beazley’s undated writings referring to Apulian vase-painting of the late 4th century quoted by Trendall (1985) 31. 12   Beazley (1928) 74. Trendall (1989) 26 almost concurred with circa 400 BC. Scholars have differed in their approach to dating: Macchioro and Tillyard categorised a great deal by date and attempted ever more precise dating; Trendall and Beazley, on the other hand, steered away from committing themselves on exact dating, and concentrated on what style came before another. Trendall often used the phrase ‘not before’, and there is little dating in LCS, RVAp and RVP, and there are no dates in Beazley’s ARV or ABV. The dating of Greek vases has become highly precise: T.H. Carpenter (1983) 279-93, could re-date to within 5 years the Tyrrhenian Group from c.565 to a new date of c.560 BC. Confidently dating to this degree of accuracy would appear unsafe when the controversy over the chronology of the whole ancient world is taken into consideration. Francis & Vickers (1983) 49-67 have disputed dating for the 6th and 5th centuries BC, suggesting a chronology that is lower by as much as 60 years, although their theory is not generally accepted. The sequence of relative vase chronology may be safe, but not necessarily when fitting it into absolute chronology. Dating for South Italian fabrics is less precise than Attic, excepting for the cusp of the 5th/4th centuries and for the period of Python-Asteas. Denoyelle (2005) 108 disputes whether Trendall’s order of the development of Apulian workshops is correct, and suggests the Plain and Ornate Styles may have overlaped and existed side by side. 9

10

  From Invitation, a poem to Beazley by his Balliol friend J.E. Flecker (1916) 96-7. 2   Furtwängler could be considered as a third candidate. 3  Willey refered to this as the ‘classificatory historical period 1914-1960’, Orton, Tyers & Vince (1993) 4. 4   In Kurtz (1985) 65. 5   Kurtz (1985) 240. 6   Boardman (2001) 132, said: ‘It was … Gow’s influence or at least companionship that led Beazley to take Morellianism seriously for both pictures and pots.’ 7  Williams (1996) 241. 8   Spivey (1991) 3. 1

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery as well as providing us with many notable and often unique illustrations of Greek mythology and drama.13

have been attributed to the ‘fabric of Avella’ (Abella).’19 Trendall later traced the origins of this school to Sicily in the early 4th century.20

Despite Beazley’s basic antipathy toward South Italian pottery, and the fact that he never wrote a book on the subject (although he saw fit to write one on Etruscan vase-painting, suggesting he thought more highly of the latter14), Trendall said that by the end of 1928 Beazley had laid down with some precision the main lines upon which South Italian vases had developed in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC.15 He had already identified several of the principal artists, although not all of them had been named. Noël Moon carried on this work with Beazley’s help, and under his direction took things a step further in her article, ‘Some early South Italian Vase-Painters’ 1929, in which names are given to a number of the artists, and the styles of early Lucanian and Apulian are more clearly distinguished. The development of Apulian was traced from the beginnings to the Iliupersis Painter in the second quarter of the fourth century. Trendall said:

After Beazley’s death there was a reaction in some quarters against his methods. Mary Beard commented: Beazley’s artists prove to be shadowy figures. We cannot know where they were born, their social status, their level of education, their relationship with each other or how and where they were trained. [she goes on] They ‘exist’ only in so far as there is a group of surviving objects that bears their name. They are notional constructs from the style of their painting. There is nothing to be said about them that cannot be said about the pots themselves.’21 She goes on: They actually take our attention away from more fundamental issues of the meaning and function of visual images within Athenian society. No one, of course, should claim that there is only one right question about painted pottery. But it is all too easy to be dazzled the skills of connoisseurship, by the complex arguments used to assign a pot to one particular artist or one very precise date - and so fail to see that there are more immediate and, for most of us, more central questions to ask: What do the images on Athenian pottery tell us about Athenian culture, society and ideas?’22

It is obvious that by the early 1930’s Beazley had formed a clear picture of the origins and development of South Italian in the later fifth and fourth centuries and had recognised the existence of two main schools of vase-painters. One which led on from the Sisyphus Painter to the developed Apulian style of the Darius Painter and his followers, the other, which began with the Pisticci-Amykos Group, continued in the work of the Dolon and Creusa Painters, and led on to the developed Lucanian style.16

James Whitley attacking Beazley’s methods said: ‘Is the Beazley method just that, a well-judged method fitting to the material under study? Or does that considered method in truth amount to a considered theory, held and used by a consciously most untheoretical archaeologist?[he goes on] Sir John Beazley, a man who carefully avoided making any theoretical statement if he could possibly help it, was a theorist, and his theories are with us still’.23 He said later, ‘The microscopic focus of many studies of individual vase-painters leads to a certain narrowness of vision’, and continues ‘he left a more positive legacy than the one cherished by Beazleyites, this legacy is the inspiration he provided to several generations of Oxford scholars’.24 John Oakley, in ‘Why study a Greek vase-painter?’ challenged Whitley’s view of Beazley by insisting that his methods are still legitimate.25

George Dennis (a traveller, not a vase-scholar) made a good attempt at distinguishing between the types of pottery he saw as early as 1848: The pottery of the Decadence, displaying comparatively coarse forms, careless design, inferior taste, and love of the nude; resembling the ware of Magna Graecia rather than that of the pure hellenic style more commonly found in Etruria.17 In 1943, Beazley published a fundamental article on South Italian pottery: ‘Groups of Campanian Red-Figure.’ He isolated and named the Avella or AV Group after the clay from Avella in Campania, from which the majority of the AV Group vases were made. The clay is lightish brown in colour, and a wash of yellow ochre was added to the surface and burnished to give a more pleasing Attic look when fired.18 He said, ‘They… form part of a much larger group which I call ‘AV’ because many of the vases in it  Trendall (1985b) 35.   He may have considered S.I. in safe hands with Moon and Trendall, and he did publish a fundamental article on Campanian vases: Beazley (1943) 66-111. 15  Trendall (1985b) 33. Also, Tillyard (1923) 32 refers to a list of South Italian vases compiled by Beazley, that he had seen on Beazley’s desk. 16   In Kurtz (1985) 34. 17   Dennis (1883 ed) vol.II: 83. 18  The natural colour of the clay can be seen on the underneath of the vases. 13

  Beazley (1943) 76.  Trendall (1989) 157. 21   In Rasmussen & Spivey (1991) 16-17. 22   Ibid. For further criticism of Beazley’s methods see: Robertson (1976) & (1985) 19-30; Hoffmann (1979); Vickers & Gill (1994); Whitley (1997) 40-7; Oakley (1998) 209-13. 23  Whitley (1997) 40. 24  Whitley (1997) 45. 25   Oakley (1998) 209. 19

14

20

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The 20th Century Buschor

of much less importance than the pottery of all previous periods. He states:

Dr. Buschor’s work is a solid stone for the temple of knowledge.26

We should unnaturally shift the centre of gravity in our narrative if we treated the late period of Greek vasepainting with anything like the same fulness as its development from the Geometric to Meidias. The fully developed and often almost playfully treated vaseshapes give no longer any really tectonic ground for the silhouette style, which had exhausted the qualities compatible with its inward nature: the elegance of the vases feels the pictorial decoration to be a burden, as does the style of the figures feel the tectonic compulsion.29

In the early part of the 20th century, despite the mass of academic work, specialist papers, museum catalogues and books on specific aspects of vase-painting, there was still no good general handbook that covered the whole subject. Reinach’s two volume Répertoire of 1899-1900 is extensive, but concentrates almost exclusively on black- and red-figure of the high period. Samuel Birch’s History of Ancient Pottery of 1857 (largely rewritten by H.B.Walters in 1905) was available, but outdated and rambling, with long obscure anecdotes. It also overextended into Egyptian and Roman. Most importantly, both these works used old-fashioned methods of illustrating by lithograph and engraving rather than the now competent mass production of photography.

He goes on to emphasise the degradation and decline of red-figure now that Southern Italy had become the major centre of production: But the centre of gravity of the manufacture lies no longer in Athens. Even in the time of Pheidias the Attic school sent a branch to Lower Italy, which took root in the Periclean colonies of Lucania, extended to various places in Lucania, Campania, Apulia, and Southern Etruria, and soon grew up as a strong plant. In this production, which in the 4th century completely supplanted Attic importation, few really original artists took part, who all seem to belong to the early period, and perhaps were emigrated Athenians.

However, Ernst Buschor’s Griechische Vasenmalerei, written between 1912 and 1914, but not published until 1921,27 gives a complete overview of Greek painted pottery, and is a book accessible to academic and student alike. The publishers also used good quality photographs to illustrate the work. This prompted Percy Gardner, in the preface to the English edition of Buschor, to bemoan the set-backs to vase-scholarship caused by bad reproductions in the past: …until a few years ago, satisfactory study of them was impossible. Vase-paintings, in consequence of the shape of the vessels themselves, can very seldom be adequately reproduced by photography. And the published drawings of them, until about 1880, were quite untrustworthy; partly because the draughtsmen had insufficient sense of style, partly because most of the vases in the great museums were more or less restored, often in a most misleading way.

The more these Italio-Greek vases in shape, decoration and representation develop local peculiarities and depart from their purely Attic starting point, the less do they belong to our survey, which excludes provincial varieties. Out of the mass of Lower Italian vases of the 4th century, which in shape partly run with the Attic, partly develop noticeably baroque and locally limited peculiarities, which in their chiefly sepulchral representations, influenced by Orphic-Dionysiac cults, often fall into coarseness, stiffness, or effeminate insipidity.30

Thus merely to reproduce published engravings of the vases was quite misleading. The truth about them could only be known from a technical examination of the originals scattered through Europe. Yet one may say that in nearly all our English classical books old engravings are uncritically reproduced. It is a fouling of the springs. Anything more reckless and misleading than the procedure of the publishers and editors of illustrated books can scarcely be imagined. The errors resulting can only be weeded out by slow degrees.28

Buschor deplored the vase-painter’s liberal use of white paint and the ‘black ground’ ornamentation of neck and foot with branches and tendrils as progressive elements which lead the way for Hellenistic products like the Apulian Gnathia vases: ‘The new direction of art took a different direction to lower Italy [and] red-figure was no longer the congenial vehicle of the expression of its age.’31 Hoppin

Buschor’s book goes from the earliest times to the 4th century BC and includes a final chapter on Ausläufer. This looks critically at South Italian vases, but immediately makes clear the general consensus of the time that they are

Joseph Clark Hoppin (1870-1925) was professor of classical archaeology at Bryn Mawr College, and the first American scholar to publish on South Italian vases. He attached a small chapter on South Italian vases (little more

  Percy Gardner in Buschor (1921b) xii.  Works on both sides of the North Sea from this very productive period had to postpone publication until after the Great War, e.g. Tillyard (1923). 28   Gardner in Buschor (1921b) viii. 26

  Buschor (1921b) 115.   Buschor (1921b) 115-7. 31   Buschor (1921b) 158.

27

29 30

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery than a page of text plus a list of vases) to his 1924 book, A Handbook of Greek Black-Figure Vases, which voices the two standard observations of the era: the vast quantity, but the lack of study of South Italian vases. He said:

in 1917. From notes he had made before the war and from the Christie’s catalogue, Tillyard made a retrospective catalogue of the vases, and wrote an introduction that was an important advance in the study of South Italian vases. He was the first writer to put over clearly his impression of how the differences in vase-painting technique can be distinguished between South Italian and Attic red-figure by looking at the brush-work (albeit largely taking his methods of looking at brush-work from Beazley in JHS 1910), he said:

As yet the field [of S.I.] has not been very completely studied…practically none of these have been published and it is extremely difficult for any student to examine the field with any degree of thoroughness. It is to be hoped that some scholar may eventually publish a monograph properly illustrated in which the question of attributions will be adequately discussed. Although the number of vases in existence today which were manufactured in South Italy during the fourth century BC is legion, the number of artists who signed their work is extremely scanty.32

South Italian red-figure gives the impression of heaviness, expressions are frozen. There are unrelieved masses of black hair, staring eyes and frequent drooping of the heads. The varnish is less lustrous and somehow looks dirtier than Attic.37

Wuilleumier

Rather than looking at an over-view of the Greek world and accepting a certain amount of mobility in the ceramic industry, the pigeon-holing of vases became unbending. Tillyard, discussing the difficulty of categorising the earliest group of South Italian vases, said:

The Belgian Pierre Wuilleumier (1904-1979) started his academic career as a Latinist, but throughout the major part of his life he made visits to Italy (particularly Calabria) to seek out and publish South Italian vases and vase groups. He published two important works on ancient pottery: in Questions de céramique italiote (1929), in which he draws from the major works on South Italian vases up to that date, concentrating on the work of Lenormant, and in ‘Cratère inédit de Ceglie’33 he published the Karneia vase34 which had been excavated in Ceglie near Bari in 1898, but never written-up. It later became the name vase of the Karneia Painter, part of the PKP Group. He also edited a catalogue/biography of Edmond Pottier and his collection, Recueil Edmond Pottier, Études d’Art et Archéologie (1937). A large portion of this work is dedicated to the vases Pottier collected for the Louvre. Pottier included bizarre and curious comparisons of the close similarities between Japanese painting of the 18th century and Greek vase-painting, a seemingly impossible phenomenon as Japan had been closed to the outside world during the centuries of the rediscovery of Greek vases. Nevertheless, the juxtaposed illustrations are convincing [fig.28]

The style is very near, almost indistinguishable from Attic: the drawing is not good, but has an Attic facility; there is little heaviness in the expressions; brown is used for inner markings in the usual Attic way. Were it not for the rather dusty red of the clay, the lustreless quality of the varnish and the rightwards direction of the laurel-wreath, one could hardly tell that it was South Italian, which it undoubtedly is. It seems very probable that the painter of these vases was an Athenian, settled in South Italy and using the local clay and varnish.38 This method of placing vases becomes arbitrary. If a vase is painted in Southern Italy by an Attic painter is it South Italian? If that painter sailed home and painted an identical vase, would it be Attic? Insisting on quarantining every vase and saying this is definitely Attic or definitely South Italian is perhaps not a question that can be answered about this period of vase-painting. McPhee and Trendall addressed the problem of Attic/South Italian attribution in 1987 with Greek Red-Figured Fish-Plates, and Trendall again in 1990 with ‘On the Divergence of South Italian from Attic Red-figure Vase-painting’.39

Tillyard Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall Tillyard (1889-1962) taught classics and archaeology at Cambridge during the second and third decades of the 20th century, but was better known for his works on Shakespeare and Milton. Before the Great War he took a keen interest in the once famous, but by then neglected, Thomas Hope Collection of vases at Deepdene.35 His first recorded visit to see the vases at Deepdene was in 1912. Access to the collection had long been denied,36 and from 1909 a tenant took over the house. In 1914 the war stopped all further research, and the collection was hastily sold at Christie’s auction rooms

Tillyard said that Macchioro (a scholar who had already been discredited by the 1890s) was ‘the most systematic student of South Italian vases’, but disagrees with his belief that Attic influence was minimal and that Ruvo was the parent of all South Italian fabrics except Saticula.40 He also refuted Macchioro’s claim that South Italian fabrics  Tillyard (1923) 8.  Tillyard (1923) 9-10. 39   Martine Denoyelle of the Louvre has explored the problems of distinguishing Attic from early Italiote and other vase-painters in works such as Denoyelle (1992), (1995), (1997), (2002a), (2002b). 40   Now long denied as a fabric, see Beazley (1928) 75-6, Trendall (1990) 218. 37 38

  Hoppin (1924) 435.  Wuilleumier (1933) 3-30. 34   Taranto 8263, LCS 55.280, pl.24. 35   See the Hope Collection, Chapter III. 36   Furtwängler (1893) 76. 32 33

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The 20th Century

Figure 28 Pottier, comparison of 18th century Japanese painting with Greek vase design

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery have an aesthetic value that has nothing to do with Athens. Tillyard could not see the origin of any of the South Italian fabrics in Ruvo,41 and believed the best Apulian vases to be inspired by late Attic renaissance vase-painting typified by the Kertch vases.42

.370 BC.51 Beazley followed with work on the immediate successors of the Sisyphus Painter. Moon made a detailed study of four bell-kraters by one of these successors. She named him the Tarporley Painter after a vase by his hand originally from the Hope Collection, then in the Hon. Marshall Brooks Collection at Tarporley.52 She said of this vase:

Moon 43 As late as 1929, Noël Moon writes, ‘The question of the classification of the red-figured vases of Magna Graecia is still highly controversial.’44 She remarks on two of the causes of this: the inclusion of the best South Italian vases among the Attic in museums, and, ‘Many too are in comparatively inaccessible places and are unpublished.’45

You feel at once that this painter has had the Sisyphus Painter behind him. There is suppleness still in the limbs of the youths, and the same heavy solemnity in the women, despite their fussier drapery and coarser faces. The heads are characterised particularly by the large drooping mouths. I only know of four vases that are definitely by this painter, and all have very similar subjects.53

Trendall, in the latter part of his life, gave Moon the credit for laying the foundations for the categorising of South Italian: ‘The first stages of the fabric were well mapped out by Noël Oakeshott (née Moon) in her fundamental article in BSR ii,1929.’46

The four vases Moon saw were all early bell-kraters. Subsequently at least 66 more vases by this artist, including most Apulian shapes from skyphoi to column-kraters have been identified, with subjects as various as Perseus and Athena to phlyax scenes.54

Her early system (following Beazley) was to publish the best South Italian vases wherever she could find them and then to find other vases that could be grouped near them. A notable example was an Apulian bell-krater in the South Kensington Museum (now V & A 4803.1901) which she attributed to the painter of the volute-krater in Munich with the scene of the marriage of Sisyphus. This was then connected to a bell-krater by the same hand in the collection of Dr. Ruesch at Zürich.47 This was then further connected to a vase in Leyden that had been published by Valentin Müller,48 and finally, to a later work by the same artist: a volute-krater (Ruvo 1096) with a scene of the Rape of the daughters of Leukippos.

It is curious to note that at this period Moon, under the tutelage of Beazley, was concentrating on Apulian and some Lucanian, seemingly to the exclusion of Campanian. This region had produced, arguably, much of the finer, more urbane style of vase-painting in Southern Italy. Yet, in Moon’s ‘Some Early South Italian Vase-Painting’, her first major publication, she does not mention the name Campanian even in the footnotes. As she covers the period down to 360 BC, this cannot be because she is concentrating on the founding of Thurii in 443 BC.55 Trendall

Beazley named this artist the Sisyphus Painter after the vase in Munich, and made up a list of his work adding a closely associated Oxford fragment of a kotyle showing Icarus.49 Moon later pointed out to Trendall the close relation of the Sisyphus Painter to the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl.50

My colonial upbringing had perhaps given me a slight prejudice in favour of the Western Greek colonists and it enabled me to view some of their problems, as well as their attitude to the motherland with a more sympathetic eye.56

Moon used this list to make an in-depth study of the painter which she published as part of her article ‘Some Early South Italian Vase-Painters’ in 1929, in which she also plotted the development of Apulian styles down to the Iliupersis Painter’s Orestes volute-krater dated by her to

Arthur Dale Trendall57 was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1909 and educated at the University of Otago   BM F 283. RVAp 8/3.   (Los Angeles 50.8.29) RVAp 3.10. 53   Moon (1929) 41. 54   See Trendall (1978) 46-53, (1983) 5, (1991) 12-13. 55   One possible answer could lie with Beazley. He was publishing in the late 1920s -early 1930s on the question of what Campanian fabrics were in fact Attic or first generation Attic settlers: Beazley (1928), (1929b) 110, and later (1943) 66-111. Trendall said, ‘Of all the South Italian fabrics, it is to Campanian that Beazley made the most significant contribution’, Trendall (1985b) 37. Possibly Moon felt she should leave this field clear for her mentor, but felt she had a free hand to make her mark with Apulian vase-painting, a vase region that Beazley had little time for. 56  Trendall’s address at the conferring on him of the degree of D.Litt. at La Trobe, 1991, McPhee (1997) 504. 57   McPhee PBA obit (1997), as stated in the acknowledgements, ADT destroyed all his papers and the Trendall Archive at La Trobe is a modern database with no original ADT material except a few drawings and photographs, Ian McPhee & Ted Robinson pers. comm.. McPhee said 51 52

  Except for some phlyax vases which have entirely un-Attic humour.  Tillyard (1923) 11. 43   Later publishing under her married name, Noël Oakeshott. Referred to throughout this thesis as Moon. No biography can be found for her. The only reference is as the wife of Walter Oakeshott in DNB. 44   Moon (1929) 30. 45   Moon (1929) 30. 46  Trendall (1982) 1036. 47   Ruesch 14, now Zurich Wolfensperger collection. 48   Müller (1915) pls. VI & VII. 49   Oxford (1922.208), RVAp 1/92. Trendall lists it as a skyphos, Moon refers to it as a cotyle. 50  Trendall (1978) vol. 1, 14. 41 42

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The 20th Century in Dunedin, where, besides classics, he studied Greek art under Professor T.D. Adams. He then transferred to Trinity College Cambridge where he studied under A.S.F. Gow, who introduced him to Beazley. His friendship with Beazley, combined with a visit to Paestum, ‘Led to his decision to devote his life to the red-figure pottery produced by the Greek inhabitants of South Italy and Sicily.’58

Apulian, although this name had been in accepted use as a fabric since at least the time of Ely, 40 years before.63

Since the publication of Hamilton’s second vase collection had thrown the spotlight onto Attic painted pottery, and later the large discoveries at Nola had made it possible to collect and study Attic vases, South Italian vases had been relegated to the status of poor cousin in the research and publishing of ancient pottery. This meant that South Italian pottery had been neglected since the very beginning of the serious scientific study of vases had begun in the early 19th century. Its inclusion in works on pottery had been more as an overview to cover all aspects of ancient vases, usually tagged on to the end of treatises and only mentioning the late 5th century named South Italian vasepainters, completely ignoring all later production.59

In 1935, Trendall wrote an article in JHS on early Paestan pottery,64 for which he acknowledges much help from Tillyard and Elia.65 He states that the main lines of the development of South Italian pottery from its beginnings shortly after the middle of the fifth century66 to the period about 380 BC when provincialism or local characteristics began to make themselves felt, have already been laid down by the researches of Beazley, Moon, Watzinger, Wuilleumier and Philippart. He said however, that the detailed study of the bulk of South Italian pottery made after that date and a division of its fabrics has not yet been attempted.

Trendall’s article does not have such a scholarly, academic feel as the more established Wuilleumier, but has a much more approachable ‘chats on vases’ style and more readily gives credit to other vase scholars’ ideas, opinions and help.

Patroni had ‘blazed the trail’, but Macchioro’s attempts to isolate the regions, ‘have so often been proved inaccurate or arbitrary that a new map is badly needed.’67

Trendall was to change all this. Starting in the 1930s, when South Italian vases were not only of little academic interest, but also at their lowest ebb in the auction rooms, he devoted the larger part of the rest of his career to studying and publishing South Italian vases in their own right, covering the whole period and all qualities.

Trendall rightly put enormous emphasis on the importance of Asteas in the study of the whole Paestan fabric. In this 1935 article he said that recent finds in the necropolis at Spinazzo Santa Venere near Paestum confirm Patroni’s earlier (1897) placing of Asteas in Paestum, and refers to the study of all later Paestan red-figure as ‘after Asteas’. Later Trendall said, ‘It is primarily to Asteas that the credit must be given for establishing the canons which were to govern Paestan vase-decoration throughout the life of the fabric.’68 He also declares that Asteas took the work of his Sicilian forerunners, and particularly of the transitional artists like the Painter of Louvre K240, and transformed their elements into something essentially Paestan.69

His first work on South Italian red-figure came out in 1934. It was the publication of one of two large volute-kraters found in a large tomb at Ceglie in 1898 and acquired by the Museum of Taranto, but never published. Trendall said that on account of the great interest of the subjects and of the general excellence of their composition and drawing, they are of the highest importance for the study of early South Italian pottery, and it seems surprising that they have remained so long unpublished.60

Trendall noted the individual characteristics of early Paestan in the dotted circle of the male nipples and the ‘dotted navel-pubes line’, also the popularity of birds which give ‘a rather domestic air to scenes.’ Asteas had a weakness for ducks and swans with heavy flat feet and shapeless bodies with lots of dots on neck and wings.

The Belgian, Hubert Philippart (1895-1937), (who had written Collections de Céramique Grecque en Italie in 1932) catalogued the kraters, along with the other vases in the Taranto Museum in 1933, but gave only a brief description.61 Wuilleumier published one, the seated Dionysus, in the same year,62 and Trendall published the other with a scene of the birth of Dionysus in 1934. Although Trendall said that Beazley puts it very close to the Berlin Dancing Girl Painter (an Apulian vase-painter named by Moon), he at no point in the article uses the term

  Furtwängler had preferred the term Tarentine, Patroni used Puglian.   JHS 55 1935: 35-55, alongside a strong line-up of vase articles by Beazley, Oakeshott, Robertson and R. J. H. Jenkins. 65   Olga Elia of the Naples Museum, who catalogued the museum’s S.I. r-f vases during the 1920s, presumably working closely with Macchioro, who Moon (1929) 32 said was classifying the same vases at this period. 66   By saying that S.I. pottery began in the mid-5th century Trendall shows by default that the term had specifically come to mean r-f Italiote, and not other (native) types of pottery, e.g. Daunian, which were already being produced, and continued to be produced, in southern Italy. 67  Trendall (1935) 35. Time would show that it would be left for Trendall to achieve the large part of this himself. 68  Trendall (1987) 55. 69   Ibid. 63 64

‘People need to understand that Dale destroyed all such items either when he moved from Sydney to Canberra in 1954 or when he “retired” to La Trobe from Canberra in 1969’. 58   McPhee (1997) 504. 59   Not only pottery: Boardman (1995) tags S.I. and Sicilian art onto the end of his Late Classical Sculpture. 60  Trendall (1934) 175. 61   Philippart (1933) ii: 68. No details of Philippart’s background can be traced. 62  Wuilleumier (1933) 3-33. Trendall criticises him for ‘trying to make out’ that Ceglie was a flourishing centre for r-f. (1934) 179.

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Dionysus seldom appears on Paestan vases in the effeminate form in which he is found on Apulian ones.

Clearly at least as early as 1936 Trendall had already laid down plans for his future works on South Italian covering the whole genre, and (as far as possible with the dispersion of collections71 and the yet undiscovered vases which would continue indefinitely to be found) compiling a complete catalogue of all surviving South Italian vases.

Tambourines were very popular on early Paestan, and are intricately decorated with patterns on the outer edge and centre, and white ribbons attached in several places. Palmettes, which began only on bell-kraters, later spread to other shapes, even lekythoi, oinochoai and hydriai. Trendall said that these artists (Asteas and his followers) ‘did not look with approval on too much blank space in the background’ and compares them to the geometric artist and his horror vacui. They filled up every space with fillets, tambourines, a bead or ivy chain, or a row of busts or half figures, and as the period of decadence approaches, so the filling ornaments increase.

Trendall points out that even in 1936 the fabric of Paestum was still being disputed and being assigned by some scholars to Apulia, particularly Taranto. G.E. Rizzo was still of this opinion. He pointed out that on the evidence of its provenance and style, a fragment of a kalyx-krater, the Cratere di Buccino,72 showing a phlyax version of the Rape of Cassandra, signed by Asteas, found at Buccino, was more likely to come from Taranto than from Paestum,73 even though Buccino is not far inland from Paestum.

Trendall notes the consistent lack of attention and dullness of the reverses of Paestan bell-kraters (a fault common to all South Italian fabrics) but does not address the possibility that these scenes were painted by another artist, possibly a jobbing painter or apprentice. Late Attic bell-kraters also often suffer from uninspired painting on the reverse.

The argument was based on provenance rather than style. Many ‘Paestan’ vases were being found in Taranto. Why would a prolific area for red-figure vase production like Taranto be buying vases from as far away as Paestum? This argument can be countered, however, by the discovery of quantities of Paestan pottery in the vicinity of Paestum, notably ten tombs at the necropolis of Spinazzo, and also at Battipaglia and Oliveto Citra. Trendall further points to the Samnite elements which occasionally appear on Paestan vases: this could place them in Campania, but not Apulia.

Trendall dates early Paestan as a late arrival to South Italian fabrics, suggesting a period covering 365 to 340 BC, with Asteas beginning work ‘not long after 350, with Python continuing his work until the close of the century, when the period of decadence sets in’.

Rizzo quotes Aristoxenus who, writing in the last quarter of the 4th century, said that Paestum had become very barbarised, and therefore, Rizzo believed, could not have been the centre of a flourishing fabric.74 Trendall believes Aristoxenus was referring to the substitution of phlyax comedies for Greek tragedies, but this was widespread throughout the country and is not sufficient to preclude vase production. Furthermore, Rhinthon, who is so closely associated with phlyax comedy, was not born until the reign of Ptolemy I, very late in the century.

Although Trendall entitles his first article ‘Early Paestan Pottery’, he follows in the footsteps of Beazley in that it is totally concerned with the vase-painting, and vase-shapes are referred to only as a backdrop to the painting, and shape development barely mentioned (albeit their heights are meticulously listed). Trendall’s first full-length book, Paestan Pottery (1936), shows that, despite all the work that had been done since Furtwängler, much was still unsure. He said:

Further literary evidence put forward by Rizzo is a passage from Iamblichus in which a philosopher named Asteas is mentioned as being Tarantine.75 Trendall counters that the name Asteas is to be found on inscriptions in various parts of the Greek world and therefore should not be exclusively associated with Taranto. Kretschmer76 points out that the inscriptions on vases inscribed by Asteas are predominantly Ionic with a few Doric forms. This suggests he comes from a city of Ionic foundation.

The problem of South Italian pottery is still a rather confused one, and the present work represents an attempt to put into order one of its more clearly defined fabrics, that of Paestan. The existence of Paestan, as an independent style, has been admitted for many years, and since a not inconsiderable amount of work had already been done on this fabric, especially on the vases of Asteas and Python, it seemed a suitable starting place for what it is hoped will eventually be a full history of vase-painting in South Italy. To begin, however, so very much in the middle of a subject entails a number of disadvantages, not the least of which is the problem that arises over relations of Paestan to the other Italiote fabrics, since the latter have never been properly classified and only a very small portion of their vases is accessible in published form.70

Whilst Paestan Pottery was awaiting publication, at the age of 27 in 1936, Trendall applied from 22, Taviton Street, WC177 for the post of Librarian at the British   He regretted the sale of the Hope collection at Christie’s in 1917, because, of the Paestan vases it contained, the present whereabouts of more than half cannot be traced. 72  Villa Giulia (50279), RVP 94.130, pl.54b. 73   Rizzo (1925) 217-39. 74  Aristoxenus in Athenaeus XIV. 632. a.b. / Rizzo (1925) 236. 75   Iamblichus vita pythag. 36. / Rizzo (1925) 236. 76   Kretschmer (1894) 220-4. 77  A street off Gordon Square. 71

 Trendall (1936) vii.

70

88

The 20th Century

I take it that under the circumstances you will not be expecting me to return to the school this year and I am going to join up with any Service that will have me.83

School at Rome. In a letter to the BSR he lists his CV and qualifications: ‘University of Otago 10 926-29 MA 1st class in 000 Classics, 1931 postgraduate Scholarship in Arts. Cambridge University0 1931-36 BA 1st class in part II tripos & distinction in Archaeology.

According to Alicia Totolos (Trendall’s student, colleague and friend) ‘Dale didn’t keep his correspondence. He sometimes got 25 letters a day, and once he had answered a letter he threw it away (he never stopped working).’84 Unfortunately the bulk of his correspondence surviving at the BSR highlights his pecuniary circumstances rather than his academic work, e.g. on the 11.8.36 asking the assistant secretary for an advance of £25 from his March salary ‘for certain obligations next January.’85

Rome scholar in Archaeology at BSR 1934-6. Engaged in research on South Italian pottery, the results of which have appeared in three articles in JHS and will shortly appear in book form under the title of “Paestan Pottery” to be published as a supplementary volume to the ‘Papers of the British School at Rome’, in August 1936. A general study of South Italian pottery as a whole is in active preparation for publication. Modern languages:78 French, German, Italian (fluent), some knowledge of Spanish, Dutch and Modern Greek.’79

In 1938 Trendall was invited by Beazley and his editor Paul Jacobsthal to contribute a volume to be written in German about early South Italian vase-painting for their thirteen volume series Bilder Griechischer Vasen.86 Trendall had apparently gained much recognition from his earlier work, because he was chosen to contribute alongside other established vase scholars such as Payne, Rumpf, Webster, Ducati, and Beazley himself. Trendall produced Frühitaliotische Vasen, which was published as number twelve in the series. In this he suggested a theory to account for the lack of fineness in South Italian vasepainting compared with Attic, a theory which he did not pursue in later works:

In July 1936 the General Secretary of the BSR, Evelyn Shaw, offered Trendall the appointment of librarian and an advance of £75 to ‘enable him to take advantage of the present favourable tourist rate of 83 lire to the pound.’80 Trendall stayed in the post until the end of 1938 and besides his work on South Italian pottery, completely reorganised the BSR library. In his resignation letter of 11th March 1938 he said:

Much early Italiote vase-painting looks rather heavy and lifeless in comparison with Attic, and some artists seem to have drawn their inspiration mainly from sculpture, endeavouring to adapt to vase-painting compositions conceived for stone or terracotta.87

The time has now come for when I must send you a formal announcement of my intention to resign at the end of the present financial year. I shall leave Rome, and the British School especially, with no little reluctance, as my two years here have been such happy ones, nor am I entirely at ease in mind over leaving my post before reorganisation of the whole library is an accomplished fact. The main lines, however have been laid down.81

He gives as an example two versions of the Rape of the daughters of Leukippos: one by the Meidias Painter; the other by the Sisyphus Painter.88 Trendall makes a scarce reference to vase shapes when he points out that Italiote potters were late in incorporating new Attic shapes and abandoning old ones: the bell-krater carries on well into the 4th century in South Italy, ‘though this had ceased to be a popular shape in Athens in the days of those artists on whom the first Italiote painters modelled their style’.89 No South Italian cups were painted until the 4th century and the neck-amphora is seldom found in Apulia or Lucania. He was destined not to publish on South Italian pottery again for another fifteen years.

Shaw replies on 15th March: Although this was not unexpected it does not lessen my regrets that you are to leave the school just at the time when your splendid work in the reorganisation of the library is about to bear fruit.82 There is one poignant postscript; a letter dated Sept. 1939 (just as war had been declared) to Shaw from Trendall’s recently appointed successor, W.J. Craig:

  BSR Archive MS box 89c ‘W.J. Craig, librarian 1939’. Craig never returned to the BSR and a series of temporary librarians were employed from 1946. 84  Totolos pers. comm. 85   Ibid. This is despite a salary of £300 p.a. + free board and lodging. S.L. Courtauld (Director of the BSR) complains of Trinity College Cambridge’s “stinginess” for not paying A.D.T’s superannuation of £45. 86  To be published in Leipzig by Verlag Heinrich Keller. 87  Trendall (1938) 8. 88   Hydria BM E224, ARV2 1313.5, & volute-krater Ruvo 1096, RVAp 1/52, pl.5.2. 89  Trendall (1974) 1. Bell-kraters did actually continue to be produced in Athens in the 4th century. 83

  Greek and Latin crossed out in pencil.   BSR Archive MS Box 89c, ‘A.D. Trendall, Librarian 1936-9.’ 80   Ibid. 81   Ibid. 82   Ibid. 78 79

89

History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Around the end of 1938 – January 1939, Trendall finally let go of the BSR Library90 and took up his fellowship at Trinity College Cambridge. But not long after, he took a trip to New Zealand to visit his parents. Whilst there he was offered the chair of Greek at Sydney University, which had just been vacated by J. Enoch Powell.91 He accepted the post and did not return to Europe until 1950. On the outbreak of war he was recruited as a cryptographer and later headed a small team of other academics in Melbourne decoding Japanese signals.92 After the war he reoccupied the chair of Greek, later adding that of Classical Archaeology and honorary curator of the Nicholson Museum.

Trendall said that Professor T.B.L. Webster95 suggested the need for a book on phlyax vases. The bulk of the book that Trendall subsequently produced is a list of ‘every phlyax vase known to me.’ This numbered ‘about 150’96 of which ‘about 90’ are Apulian, 32 Paestan, 14 Campanian, 13 Sicilian, but none so far attributed to Lucania. He said that a considerable number have come to light recently from excavations.97 In areas outside of Apulia phlyax vases appear later (mid 4th century), most of the Paestan vases coming from the Asteas-Python workshop, two being signed by Asteas. Trendall said that Asteas shows a touch of originality and vigour on these not found on his other works. Campanian phlyax vase-paintings are simpler in design, and without a stage setting.

Trendall’s sojourn in Rome in the early 1950s coincided with the reinstallation of the vases in Sala VIII of the Museo Gregoriano in the Vatican. His auspicious presence and his pre-eminence in South Italian vase scholarship (and, no doubt, his fluent Italian) led to his being asked to catalogue the proto-Italiote, Lucanian, Paestan, Campanian, and Apulian (down to 375 BC) in the Vatican. This work was published as Vasi antichi dipinti del Vaticano in 1953, and followed two years later by volume II containing the remaining Apulian vases to the end of the 4th century, the Gnathian ware, the coloured vases, the geometric designs and finally the Etruscan red-figure: Vasi italioti et etruschi a figure rosse, 1955.

He traces the origin of phlyax to φλύακες, a word that seems to have been used to designate both the actors in a certain type of rustic comedy, as well as the performances themselves which, according to Sosibios,98 were the South Italian equivalent of what the δειχηλιοταί performed in Sparta. Trendall quotes Webster’s evidence99 that a number of comic vases found in Athens showing Attic comedies of the 4th century, are reflected in scenes in South Italian vases, and were presumably also performed in Magna Graecia at the same period. At the same time, the treatment of costume is fairly uniform throughout all fabrics, showing that the performance was standard all over South Italy. Mannack points out that true Phlyax plays were only staged after 320 BC – about eighty to seventy years after the earliest Phlyax Vases, therefore it has been suggested that these vases show Athenian comedies.100

Considering Trendall’s only published work on South Italian vases between 1938 and 1959 were his two Vatican volumes, the following years were very busy, with, among others, six new works on South Italian pottery from 1959 to 1962.93

The three most popular characters on phlyax vases that have so far been found are: a) The old man, master of the house (a miser, strict father, or hen-pecked husband), with his aged scheming slave; b) Dionysus, the patron of phlyax (especially on Paestan vases) and; c) Herakles, usually being mocked, robbed while distracted, or depicted drunk. Trendall said:

In 1959, Trendall published in the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies an area of vase-painting that enabled him to combine two of his favourite subjects: South Italian red-figure vases, and the theatre. In this work entitled ‘Phlyax Vases’ he said: For some time I have been hoping to prepare a detailed study of the so-called phlyax vases in which both the subjects represented upon them and the chief characteristics of their style would have been treated at length. To carry out the latter task it became necessary to make a more thorough survey of South Italian red-figure and I hope before long to publish the firstfruits of this in new classification of Campanian and Lucanian vase-painting.94

Many aspects of divine and human activity may be studied upon these vases, which provide us with the liveliest and most original examples of South Italian vase-painting. The discovery of Attic prototypes has shown that the phlyax vases were not, as was supposed earlier, of purely Italiote inspiration, but it was certainly in South Italy that they reached their highest artistic level.101 In 1960 he produced ‘The Cassandra Painter and his Circle’, expanding the fundamental characteristics of their

 Although Trendall’s post had officially ceased, he continued to correspond with Shaw about his treasured library reorganisation. 91   Ian McPhee, Trendall’s friend and colleague at La Trobe, understood the offer was unexpected (1997) 507, but a letter from Trendall (BSR Arc. 89c) of 1938 suggests he believed the post might be his if he wanted it. McPhee (pers. comm.) said: ‘There is no correspondence from Enoch Powell in the Trendall Centre.  I don’t in any case think that there was much, if any, contact, because Trendall by chance was in New Zealand visiting his parents at the time of Powell’s resignation, and was recommended to Sydney by someone in Cambridge, probably Gow’.  92   McPhee (1997) 508. 93   Plus Greek Vases in University House (1961). 94  Trendall (1959) iii. This mention of an imminent forthcoming book on Campanian and Lucanian will help to chronologically place the two 90

undated Warburg MSS looked at below. 95  The Director of the ICS and author of Studies in Menander, which had looked at Comedy on S.I. vases, was just finishing an article, ‘More Dramatic Masks on Gnathia Vases’, (Antike Kunst 3, 1960). 96  This has increased to ‘more than 250’, Mannack (2008) 194. 97  Trendall (1959) 9. 98  Athenaeus XIV 621. d. 99  Webster (1948) 15-27. 100   Mannack (2008) 194. 101  Trendall (1959) 14.

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The 20th Century style: comparatively small heads, with a headband of fine spikes, rather flat in profile, fine features, small noses, dots for eye pupils, parted lips and rounded chins. Anatomical details in fine relief lines, rounded female breasts with small circles for nipples. Hair a solid mass of black, with a thin reserved contour.

cold war to publish Lucanian and Campanian vases in Czechoslovakia.108 Th following year he published more ‘head’ vases found in Tomb 7 at Fratte, near Salerno, a woman’s tomb. Trendall said: ‘The tombs of men are generally characterised by the presence of bronze belts or fragments of armour, those of women by clay vases.’109 This is misleading, as the tombs of most men of this period also contain clay vases. The head vases found at Fratte gave their name to the Fratte Painter,110 whose work, Trendall said, bears all the hall-marks of Cumae. This painter’s work can be seen from Trendall’s illustrations to be mediocre, even by the standards of contemporary Apulian head vases, and he does not mention the Fratte Painter again in RVP, LCS, or in any future publication. This gives weight to the later criticism of Spivey and others that the attempt to record and publish every figured vase ever found is an impossible and pointless task.111

In 1961, Continuing work associated with the Cassandra Group, Trendall published the new vases found at Pontecagnano near Salerno that are very similar in style to the Painter of BM F63,102 whose style, Trendall said, is clearly descended from that of the Cassandra Group.103 The particular similarities lie in the floral decoration and the treatment of the female heads, and especially in the case of the close comparison of the treatment of the face and breast of Herakles on a squat lekythos from Cumae (now Naples 128044),104 to the youth to the right on the Cambridge hydria (248).105 These features, particularly the breasts, are represented uncharacteristically as those of an adolescent girl rather than the manly Herakles.

There is evidence that, while the above crop of works was being produced from 1959 onwards, Trendall was also hard at work on his future magnum opus, The RedFigured Vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily: lodged at the Warburg Institute at the University of London are two unpublished and undated112 manuscript books by Trendall. Both are typed, carbon-copies on very thin paper, with corrections in pen and coloured and plain lead pencil. Some pages have tiny pencil sketches of vase designs where the designs are not easily described.

Trendall was returning to a South Italian fabric which, although not one of the three major Italiote fabrics, had enjoyed his special attention since he had published it as his first major work: Paestan. The 1961 excavations at Pontecagnano106 had brought to light a number of Paestan vases from the Asteas Group. In the same cache as these were found some vases decorated with female heads, which Trendall referred to as ‘of comparatively slight artistic merit’, but that were nevertheless of ‘considerable interest for the history of Campanian red-figure vase-painting’, especially in their connections with the contemporary Paestan style. Three of these have a female head wearing a kekryphalos decorated with rows of dots, which is wrapped round the head so as to leave exposed some hair at the back as well as a small bunch over the ear, from which hangs an ear-ring.107 The curving line of the nostril, the down-turned mouth and upward-gazing eye have close connections with Paestan heads of the same period.

The first book is entitled Lucanian Red-Figure Vases compiled by A.D. Trendall. 113 Comparing this volume to his later published version, The Red-figured Vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily of 1967, it can be seen that this typescript is an earlier version. The contents start in the same order: The Pisticci-Amykos Group, but his original category of Associated Vases: (i) Big-Head, (ii) other vases, (iii) The Brooklyn Painter, (iv) skyphoi,114 becomes in the published version: ‘Followers of the Amykos Painter,’ and is a much expanded section covering two chapters. The earlier version has a much less descriptive text and is really more of a list of numbered vases, although the numbering is quite different from that used in the published LCS. An example of how the text has been expanded can be seen by comparing a phrase in the MS:

The problem was placing these as Paestan or Campanian. The provenance suggested Campanian, as did their stylistic association with the Cassandra Group. However, their juxtaposition in the tomb with a group of otherwise Paestan vases of the same date, and the recent finds of group F63 vases in Paestum itself were confusing. Trendall concluded that although these vases are more likely to be Campanian, they show the stylistic inter-relationship between them, suggesting a Campanian painter who spent time in Paestum.

 Trendall (1962a) & (1962b). The Czech publication JKF 4 (1962b) is unobtainable. 109  Trendall (1963-4) 18 110  Whether this name was chosen by Trendall, or had already been given by the excavators is not mentioned. 111   Spivey (1991) 3. 112  The browned paper, fountain-pen notations, and heavily rusted staples suggest the 1950s or early 60s. 113  Warburg cat. KKN 625 T.62 80/3351. Trendall was in close association with the ICS at this period, they having published his Phlyax Vases in 1960. It is therefore strange that the only copies in London of this and its companion MS were given to the Warburg Institute. 114  With pages 34-36 omitted, with a note to this effect typed at the head of p.37. 108

In 1962 Trendall published ‘Head Vases in Padua’, and also travelled behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the   LCS 2/639.   Trendall (1961a). 104   LCS 2/663. 105   LCS 2/645. 106  Trendall did not consider it important to give details of the specific dig or the archaeologist, or perhaps he was aware of the dangers of looting. 107  Trendall (1961a) 29. 102 103

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery [The Sydney Painter] begins in close relationship to Creusa-Dolon, but tends to barbarise, characterised by the open mouth and use of a floral.115

and marshalled with such meticulous care, that most future finds will be allocated to appropriate categories without much controversy.121

Which becomes in the published LCS:

She continues in ‘few small criticisms’ concerning the laborious describing of vases in listings, rather than simply illustrating them:

[The Sydney Painter] is an interesting artist of the provincial school, with a style very reminiscent of that of the Painter of BM F162, which at its worst descends almost to the barbaric…In his earlier work the influence of the Dolon Painter may be observed, and on the frontal face of the woman on the altar in the Moscow hydria (619). It is, however, to the painter of BM F162 that he stands closest, as may readily be seen from a comparison between the youths on the reverses of their vases (e.g. Louvre K405 & Naples 1872) especially in regard to the treatment of their faces and drapery, or from a study of his decorative patterns, which are derived from the work of that painter.116

Important little particularities of style are listed (in smaller type) in many of the introductions to individual painters. If small illustrations of some of these minutiae could have been provided to supplement or replace the descriptions, the gain to the reader would be immense [and] if this could be done, would it have been possible, in selecting vases by which to illustrate an idiosyncrasy of pattern or drawing, to ensure that the point is always illustrated in the plates? To look up such details in other publications (if they exist) takes time, and sometimes when the reference vase is illustrated, the definition is not good enough to make the point clear.122

‘Vases of which the present whereabouts are unknown,’ are listed in an appendix at the back of the MS, whereas in LCS, Trendall includes these in the main text under their appropriate headings.

R.M. Cook, praising LCS, said most Greek vase specialists ‘have thought its study too big a task’. He continued: ‘My only serious doubt is whether the accepted division into Campanian, Paestan and Sicilian Schools is worth maintaining now that Trendall has provided a classification by workshops and painters’.123 T.B.L. Webster said of LCS: ‘No praise is too high for this book, and its expertise is so great that no one else could review it adequately except the author. That he lives on the other side of the world to most of his vases, one can only marvel more’.124 Mauro Cristofani, reviewing LCS, admired it, but found difficulties with Trendall’s dates for Thurii and Sicilian ware.125

The second MS117 is Campanian Red-Figure (Vases)118 Compiled by A.D. Trendall. This, although with much less of the later descriptive text, mainly corresponds in subject order with LCS. However, the Owl-Pillar Group which begins page one of the MS is relegated to an appendix in LCS, and lists 134 vases to the MS’s 84. In 1966 Trendall produced for the British Museum South Italian Vase-painting, using only vases from the Museum collection as illustrations. It was a short introduction to the subject for museum visitors, with only 23 pages of actual text. It appears to have been produced as a reasonably priced vehicle for illustrating the museum’s South Italian vases.119

In 1970 Trendall was given permission to publish three large Apulian kraters in the Staatliche Museen Berlin. It is clear that in publishing these vases Trendall is only interested in the vase-paintings, and not other aspects of the vases, such as size, shape, context or provenance. He mentions briefly that all three (a bell-, a volute- and a kalyx-krater) were reputedly found in one tomb, but he makes no attempt to pursue this, or to comment on whether they were even found in Apulia or a totally different part of Italy, or how, and at what date, the Museum acquired them. He assigns them to, or immediately around, the Darius Painter, who he said was:

In 1967 Trendall was finally able to publish what was probably his most ambitious, detailed and extensive work, covering around 5,000 vases, that had taken years to come to fruition:120 The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily, universally known as LCS. Noël Moon said in her review of this work in JHS: In the main the whole territory has now been mapped, and the enormous quantity of material has been sorted

One of the principal Apulian vase-painters of the third quarter of the fourth century BC and an artist whose style and technique had a profound effect upon subsequent development of South Italian vase-painting. The bell-krater is by the painter’s own hand, the other

  Here a tiny drawing in the text demonstrates the floral pattern, p.57.   LCS: 127. 117   KKN 625 T.62 80/3352. 118  This MS has no title-page, although the title is on the spine and on the top right-hand corner of the fly-leaf. The word Vases was added as an after-thought in pencil. Both MSS read ‘figure’, whereas LCS reads ‘figured’. 119  There is a curious anomaly in the bibliography: Trendall lists LCS as already published (Oxford 1966) whereas it was not to appear until 1967, a year after the BM book. Its intended publication must have been held up. 120   Moon called it the result of 35 years of intensive study, Oakeshott (1968) 238. 115 116

  Ibid.   Oakeshott (1968) 239. 123   Webster Antiquity 41 (1967) 335. 124   Webster AJA 73 (1969) 388-9. 125   Cristofani ArchCL 20 (1968) 390-6. 121 122

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The 20th Century two are closely associated with him in style and are of particular value for the fresh light they shed upon the circle of painters who may be grouped around him.126

Campanian hydriae and kraters, and Apulian and Lucanian nestorides. The title of the paper could be misleading, as indigeni would suggest ‘native’ i.e. Italic, rather than Italiote.

Two of the kraters show scenes that are rare on South Italian vases. The bell-krater is illustrated with the rape of Chrysippos. The kalyx-krater with the unbinding of Prometheus, with scenes probably taken from Aeschylus’ lost Promethean Trilogy (because of the inclusion of Gaia). There is a certain rambling style in some of Trendall’s descriptions that can prove confusing: on this vase there are several very similar peplos clad women to which he refers, meandering from one to the other, making it unclear which is which.

Producing a publication like LCS, that aimed to include every known vase of a certain fabric, is inevitably going to be an endless task, with new vases being excavated or appearing on the market continuously, and in 1973 Trendall produced his first supplement to this. In 1974 Trendall revised and reissued his 1938 book Early South Italian Vase-Painting. No more publications appeared while he worked on the massive undertaking of his next major book which came out in 1978: The RedFigured Vases of Apulia was a work parallel in size and extent to LCS.

The volute-krater has a scene with Menelaus and Helen. This is one of the most striking action scenes in South Italian vase-painting, with a real feeling of movement and drama. Helen is seated at the shrine of Athena, with one arm hugging the statue of Athena and the other holding up her cloak to shield herself from the wrath of Menelaus who is held back on one side by Eros who has made him drop his sword, and by Aphrodite (?) on the other side who restrains his shield and spear. On the far side a Trojan in Phrygian cap and trousers flees the scene.

For this task he went into partnership with his colleague at La Trobe University, Alexander Cambitoglou. The RedFigured Vases of Apulia took on the huge task of listing and categorising the vast variety of Apulian red-figure, including every known example of the ubiquitous ‘big head’ design. In a review of the first supplement to this work, Margot Schimdt commented ‘thanks to the authors the vast field of Apulian vase-painting … has become a minutely mapped-out landscape, an immense task carried through with brilliant scholarship and admirable patience. The wealth of knowledge to be drawn from these volumes will not easily be measured by individual readers’, but she goes on to remark on the inclusion of individual painters of modest quality, a point later echoed by Spivey in his comment that attempting to list every vase lifted the craft to a position it cannot sustain.130 RVAp was followed in 1987 by Red-Figured Vases of Paestum, perhaps Trendall’s favourite fabric and a book which he accomplished alone. This same year he also collaborated in Greek Red-Figure Fishplates with his friend Ian McPhee at La Trobe.

In 1970-71, Trendall travelled to southern Italy to work on two further series on Italiote vases. In 1970 he contributed a paper at the 10th Convegno degli Studi sulla Magna Grecia at Taranto entitled ‘La Ceramica’.127 Although he starts with mentioning Metaponto, the Lucanian painters Amykos and Pisticci, and the foundation of Thurii in 443 BC, the rest of the paper is an overview of Apulian redfigure. He selected fine examples of vases from protoApulian, 430-400 BC, stating that the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl and the Sisyphus Painter are the earliest, and that the Tarporley Painter was a close follower of Sisyphus in the first quarter of the 4th century, and was very important in the depiction of theatre, being the first to paint a vase with a phlyax scene.128 Trendall carries on through the 4th century to the ultimate phase of Apulian red-figure: the Darius Painter, the Underworld Painter, and ending with the Baltimore Painter. It seems clear from La Ceramica that Trendall was already formulating his later Red-Figured Vases of Apulia.

In 1989, aged 80, Trendall produced a handbook of South Italian vases based on his 1966 British Museum book, South Italian Vase-Painting, but greatly expanded and rewritten. Red-Figure Vases of South Italy and Sicily, is a Thames and Hudson volume uniform with Boardman’s Attic black- and red-figure vase series. This book is very approachable by academic and enthusiast alike, and can be a much quicker reference than the large and more involved LCS and RVAp. However, in this work Trendall states in his introduction to ‘Historical Background’:

Trendall catalogued the South Italian vases put together for an exhibition Gli indigeni nella pittura Italiota organised by the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Bari and Lecce to coincide with the 11th convention of the study of Magna Grecia at Taranto in 1971.129 This slim volume is a brief four-page introduction to a series of photographs of a good cross-section of examples of South Italian vases from around the world, concentrating largely on

The term ‘South Italian’ is generally applied to the redfigured vases made by the Greek colonists (Italiotes) in South Italy and Sicily between c. 440 and the end of the fourth century BC. Some of this pottery came to light in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries at various sites in Apulia and Campania and was highly prized because of the interest of its subjectmatter. From the later nineteenth century onwards,

 Trendall (1970) 1.  Trendall (1971a) 249-65.. 128   (NY 24.97.104) RVAp 3.7. Later, in RVAp, Trendall was to put Dionysiac and athletic scenes as being of equal importance in the work of the Tarporey Painter, Trendall & Cambitoglou (1978) I, 45. 129   Trendall (1971b) 126 127

  Schmidt (1986) 253, Spivey (199) 3.

130

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery however, there was a marked change of taste in favour of Athenian vases.131

Dale Trendall, disparu en 1995 après avoir cherché, durant toute sa vie d’archéologue, à intégrer dans ses listes chaque vase dont il pouvait avoir connaissance. L’aspect mouvant évolutif, du travail de Trendall est un premier point à relever, qui le différencie profondément de J.D. Beazley dont il avait pourtant repris la méthode, et dont les remarques sur la céramique italiote, quoique dispersées entre divers articles et comptes rendus, ont constitué le terreau de sa propre recherche.135

Trendall’s interest was obviously in the vases themselves, and not in their original discovery or in the work of his early predecessors. There is little mention of the history of the vases discovery and attribution. His idea that ‘some of this pottery came to light’ in the later 18th and early 19th century, is misleading: South Italian vases had been found in large quantities (many of them being among the most important Italiote specimens) since the beginning of the 18th century in collections such as Valetta, de Caylus, Gaulteri and Mastrilli. Furthermore, his statement that Athenian vases were not favoured until the later 19th century is clearly inaccurate: already, at the time of Hamilton’s second collection in the 1790s, Attic vases were in the ascendancy, and by the time of the finds at Vulci in the 1830s, Attic wares were becoming the most prized and sought-after fabric. By the end of the 19th century, Attic vases were completely established, and to suggest that they had recently benefited from a favourable change in taste is misleading.

But, after praising Trendall’s remarkable work, she goes on: En deuxième lieu, la recherche archéologique a considérablement modifié, au cours de ces dernières décennies, le paysage historique et culturel de la Grande Grèce, bouleversant concurremment notre vision des différentes productions et de leurs caractéristiques. Enfin, l’apparition massive de matériels nouveaux et significatifs, provenant soit des fouilles archéologiques, soit des opérations clandestines qui approvisionnent le marché de l’art, menaçait à tout instant de rendre caduques les classifications initiales, ou de diminuer leur valeur si elles n’étaient pas périodiquement remises à jour.136

Dale Trendall, probably the most important South Italian vase scholar,132 died at the age of 86 in 1995, only a couple of years after leaving his rooms overlooking La Trobe University. Applying the methods of Beazley and with the early companionship and co-operation of Tillyard and Moon, he made South Italian vase-painting an important archaeological subject in its own right. Any future study will inevitably be built on his work, not only his wideranging expertise and his unique eye, but on the enormous repetitive work of searching out, categorising, and the time allocated to meticulous cataloguing. Moon said: ‘All who research further in this field will owe him an immense debt.’133

Schneider-Herrmann Gisela137 Herrmann was born in Berlin in 1893 and attended classical art courses at universities across Germany: Berlin, Hamburg, Heidelberg, and Munich, but seemingly never took a full time degree. In her late thirties she married Georg Schneider and moved to Holland where she studied classical archaeology under Professor Scheurleer at Leiden. She specialised in South Italian vases and their subject matter, and built up a large private collection of Italian antiquities, particularly South Italian vases, at a time when collecting antiquities was respectable and South Italian vase prices were at an all-time low. She published this collection as Eine Niederländische Studiensammlung antiker kunst in 1975, and bequeathed it to Leiden University.

Trendall has so far not suffered the same criticism of his work as Beazley.134 Perhaps this is because connoisseurship, just as much as Beazley, was under attack, and Beazley was the main exponent of this, while Trendall only followed Beazley’s methods. Secondly, Beazley was pre-eminent in the field of Archaic and Classical Attic vase-painting, a subject considered high in the canon of art, whereas Trendall worked on Italiote wares, a subject less likely to arouse academic competitiveness. Further, it is perhaps too early to expect a re-assessment of Trendall. Denoyelle said:

Not starting to publish seriously until her late sixties, she nevertheless wrote prolifically on South Italian vases into her late eighties and left one of her major works (on Samnites depicted on Campanian vases) almost complete when she died aged 98. Schneider-Herrmann’s speciality seemed to be the searching out of the anomalous and idiosyncratic in South Italian vase iconography. Her first foray was Ein Apulisches Vasen Fragment, 1961, a straightforward detailed publication of the surviving half of a volute krater showing chariots on the shoulder, and gifts to a shrine on the lower body of the vase. But her second work,

Dresser aujourd’hui un tableau de l’état de la recherche stylistique sur les vases italiotes revient à se poser d’emblée la question de la validité, de l’utilité présente et du destin futur de l’œuvre de classification d’Arthur  Trendall (1989) 7.  And, unless some totally new way of looking at ancient art comes into vogue, or a huge cache of a previously unknown fabric is unearthed which alters the whole chronology and origins of S.I. vases, he will permanently remain so. 133   Moon (1968) 239. 134   See supra p.135 & n.627. 131 132

  Denoyelle (2005) 103.   Ibid. 137   Some catalogues refer to her as Gertrud. 135 136

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The 20th Century of 1962, was a more unusual study of the depiction of anthropomorphic handles on hand-mirrors (some held by figures in the scene, others incorporated into the decoration) on Apulian vases: Apulische Schalengriffe Verschiedener Formen. She probes the origins of the naked male, arms raised, legs together pose of the grip on the mirror handle. She also mentions several South Italian vase-paintings that show these same figures used as chair struts and adornments, particularly those on the throne portrayed on the Darius krater in Naples, and the Underworld krater in Munich. She attempted to find whether the mirrors were representational or imaginary, whether they were Greek or Etruscan, old artifacts or contemporary with the vases.

Schneider-Herrmann produced her second full-length book on the vase shape known as the nestoris or trozzella: Red-Figured Lucanian and Apulian Nestorides and their Ancestors, in 1980, proving this to be a Messapian native shape with origins in Japygian pottery of the 9th century BC, which in turn was influenced by Mycenean and Villanovan wares, and used from the time of the Amykos Painter by red-figure workshops. She also covered the iconography that was most popular on this type of vase, including the portrayal of native Messapians. A large proportion of the figures portrayed are women, and the majority of scenes have women in them, with an interesting array of women’s accessories and domestic objects.146 The presentation of gifts and the appearance of Eros are regular themes. Schneider-Herrmann presumes them to represent premarriage-rites, with a strong Eros cult. Libation scenes are also frequent. The traditional Italian trozzella was only decorated with basic geometric patterns or leafage, and she erroneously believed that the figured nestoris never went through a proper black-figure stage.147 Trendall said, ‘It is in early Lucanian, where contacts with the native tribes of the hinterland were perhaps closer than at Tarentum, that the first examples of this shape [nestoris] in red-figure are to be found, the earliest is by the Amykos painter’.148

Following on from this, Schneider-Herrmann published a very unusual Apulian red-figure pottery disk or plate, with an anthropomorphic handle attached, giving the whole the look of a hand-mirror.138 However, it is not usable as such as it is black slip, with a red-figure representation of a flying Eros. One possibility she does not suggest is that this could have been a love token. Over the next decade she published on such subjects as ball games in West Greece;139 a unique scene on an Apulian pelike of Eros playing with a whipping-top (with Trendall);140 xylophones in South Italian vase-painting;141 and female acrobats on two Apulian plates.142

In her work on nestorides Schneider-Herrmann further examined Patroni’s thesis that nearly all Italiote vases were made exclusively for funerary purposes.149 No verdict has been reached on the illustrations of daily life, which have been insufficiently studied. She did not insist on the funerary interpretation of the mythological and Dionysian scenes and ponted out the fundamental importance of Eros worship and his presence in the most standard scenes. She said, ‘in particular the stock pictures affecting the Eros cult as a premarriage celebration under the protection of the fertility divinities of Dionysos and Aphrodite, with Eros as their mediator’.150

Probably the most unusual artifact that she plucked from obscurity and published143 was a bizarre pottery mask to fit a human, but in the form of a panther’s face, decorated with a large Apulian red-figure Eros flying on the forehead. Her main pioneering works were the attempt to prove a cult of Eros in Southern Italy from representations of the god on South Italian vases,144 and a Dionysian cult in phlyax plays.145 Schneider-Herrmann’s other great interest was vase shapes. Besides publishing some of the more outlandish red-figure shapes, she also wrote two exhaustive full-length books, the first being Apulian RedFigured Paterae with Flat or Knobbed Handles in 1977. In this she studied the correlation between flat-handled paterae and bronze paterae, concluding that the bronze examples were earlier and the terracotta ones were copied to resemble them as nearly as possible. Whereas with knob-handled paterae the similarity is less so, being less elaborately ornamented than the bronze. She also reviewed illustrations of paterae on South Italian vases: how they were shown being used and where they were placed in the scene. She lists a large variety of vase shapes on which they are illustrated including paterae themselves.

Trendall said of this work ‘it made a most valuable contribution to our better understanding of South Italian red-figure, and, in particular, to the connection between it and the native wares.’151 Her final book, The Samnites of the Fourth Century BC as Depicted on Campanian Vases and in Other Sources, which compared armour found in tombs with that shown on red-figure vases of the second half of the 4th century, was posthumously published in 1996.

  Fans, mirrors, wool-balls, spindles, spinning-tops, trinket-boxes, wreaths and garlands, as well as the portrayal of a wide range of vase shapes. 147   S-H was unaware of the Messapian b-f Nestoris in the Copenhagen Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, CVA COPC 1, 126-129, fig. 82 & the Attic trozzellas in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Beazley Archive 30683-4. 148  Trendall (1990) 223. 149   Schneider-Hermann (1980) 54-7. Patroni (1897) 173. 150   Schneider-Hermann (1980) 57. 151   Introduction to Schneider-Herrmann (1996) xx. 146

  Schneider-Herrmann (1963).   Schneider-Herrmann (1971). 140   Schneider-Herrmann & Trendall (1975). 141   Schneider-Herrmann (1976b). 142   Schneider-Herrmann (1982a). 143   Schneider-Herrmann (1972b). 144   Schneider-Herrmann (1963), (1968), (1970), (1973). 145   Schneider-Herrmann (1965). 138 139

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Other Scholars in the Past 50 Years

on Attic vases. There exist three clear distinctions between the types of altar: the monument, the natural formation and the ambiguous form.

H.R.W. Smith H.R.W. Smith concentrated on funerary iconography in South Italian vase-painting and the significance of the vases themselves in a funerary context. His Funerary Symbolism in Apulian Vase-Painting of 1972 was one of the first to claim to study this theme, but it is a subjective, eccentric and difficult to follow book, whose chapters do not equate to their chapter-headings. Smith deviates off on irrelevant musings, and little is discussed about any actual Apulian vase. His ‘The “Great Derangement”; Orphism and Alexander the Molossian? Further “OrphicoPythagorean” Problems’ is a particularly dense and abstruse chapter, with no obvious relevance to Apulian vase-painting. Trendall referred to Smith’s Funerary Symbolism as a ‘remarkable work’, but advocated caution in pressing the importance of funerary symbolism too far, and later referred back to it as penetrating, if eccentric.152 François Villard, commenting in 1989, said that Smith ‘guesses’ that everything in Apulian vase-painting is funereal symbolism and that even their use was uniquely funerary; their representations symbolising in particular, an ‘eschatogamy’, a union of the deceased in the beyond - an after-life - with the divinity, vouched for by a series of varied objects which have very precise significance.153 He queries whether Smith is correct in suggesting that the paintings are about Pythagoreanism- a doctrine which had so much influence in Magna Graecia of the 4th century, or whether they are simply ‘genre scenes’ of a more or less amorous tone and the evocation of whether or not to consummate marriage with the dead?154 Eva Keuls did not reject Smith’s ‘eschatogamy’ theory but considered that the doctrine has formed itself to the ways of heterogeneous elements (theatre, philosophy, even daily life) in the ‘mystico-sepulcral’ area; she is more sceptical with that which concerns the role of Eros’ androgyny.155 Villard points out, ‘This is a prudence suggested and shared by K. Schauenburg,156 and one knows the wariness of J.M. Moret towards the notion of ‘system’ or ‘symbolic code’ for the objects inserted into the myths of which the profound sense changes’157.

The most common types of monumental altars are a table with a parapet; a triangular parapet; a parapet with volutes; a plain block; and pillar altars. Scenes from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides of suppliants at an altar differ in so many ways from the surviving plays that they become difficult to identify.159 Significance is placed on the activities performed in the sacrificial space and the objects used, such as strigils and halteres. Cassimatis said: L’iconographie italiote est, beaucoup plus que l’iconographie attique ou celle des autres regions, ancrée dans la réalité. Les objets de l’environnement quotidian sont les instruments de son langage : son discours s’articule par eux et autour d’eux, les haltères en sont un exemple, comme le strigile et tant d’autres. Objets-symboles ils deviennent mots pour un langage et une syntaxe iconographiques.160 Cassimatis believes there was an institution of ephebes existing in Southern Italy, and a Spartan connection with Lucania: …les Lucaniens imposaient un rite de passage de classe d’âge aux garcons, les obligeant à aller vivre dans les bois tout comme cela se faisait à Sparte, avec des particularités propres aux lucaniens.161 Robinson Ted Robinson of Sydney University, following in the Trendall tradition, has specialised in South Italian pottery, concentrating initially on Apulian red overpainted pottery of the Xenon Group. His team has pioneered locating the origins of vases by analysing the clay, rather than just by typology and shape.162 Using the technique for chemical analysis called PIXE-PIGE (Proto Induced X-ray and Gamma-ray Emission Spectroscopy), he measures the 14 elements in clay, and distinguishes groups, which differ in the various districts of Southern Italy, using Principal Component Analysis.

Cassimatis

Robinson has also undertaken a huge statistical survey, using RVAp as a basis, to try to locate late Apulian redfigure workshops in northern Apulia, then to see if all early Apulian red-figure was made at Taranto, and finally to study middle Apulian production to establish at what period potters and painters spread out from Taranto and

Hélène Cassimatis of the Louvre has produced a body of work concentrating on altars depicted on South Italian redfigure vases. In 1991, she studied the differences between the altars portrayed on Italiote vases and those on Attic.158 Altars appear on South Italian vases from around 430-20 BC, and changes in repertoire of representations are rare until 350-40 BC. They are less grand than altars portrayed

 Albeit, as the earliest surviving copies of these plays are much later than the vase-paintings, there is no certainty that it is not the plays that may have been changed and the paintings show scenes that were later cut or altered. Alternatively, they could represent plays on the same basic theme by other dramatists, now lost. 160   Cassimatis (1991a) 42. 161   Ibid. 162   Lyons (1997) 233 quotes a letter from the antiquary Matteo Egizio to Mastrilli showing that the observation of clay colour as an indication of the origin of vases was in use as early as 1735. 159

 Trendall (1980) 274.  Villard (1989) 194. 154  Villard (1989) 192. 155   Keuls (1975) 439-58. 156   Schauenburg (1961) 96 & (1983) 599-606. 157  Villard (1989) 195. Moret (1978) 86-92. 158   Cassimatis (1991a). 152 153

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The 20th Century established workshops in other native settlements.163 Working with the available provenances and on the assumption that vases in old local collections, such as the museums of Lecce and Brindisi, and the Jatta and Caputi Collections, were gathered mainly from their own regions, Robinson has been able to create graphs showing the eventual destination of vases from particular Apulian workshops. For instance, of the Apulian Early Ornate Style, the graph shows that 57% of vases produced in Taranto stayed there, while 32% were sold in Peucetia, particularly Ruvo, the remaining 11% being spread across Messapia, Basilicata and elsewhere.164

whole of Magna Graecia, including Sicily, and questions whether it parallels a spread of beliefs. However, he cites Paestum and Capua which testify to some fashions of behaviour, rituals and funerary practices which appear very different.167 Schauenburg Konrad Schauenberg was professor of archaeology at Kiel from 1968 to 1990. He began to collect vases for the Antikensammlung, which before his tenure had only purchased one vase since World War II.168 Schauenburg’s personal interest in South Italian vases meant that the collection specialised in, and eventually became a research centre for, South Italian pottery. He studied Italiote vasepainting from early in his career, publishing an article on the depiction of god worship on South Italian vases in 1961. Between 1999 and 2002 he produced his five volume Studien zur unteritalischen Vasenmalerei, an extensive catalogue illustrating examples of all types of South Italian black- and red-figured vase-painting and shapes.

Villard In his approach to South Italian vase-painting François Villard concentrated on its the meaning and significance, what the scenes tell us about life and death in the Greek world, and the mixing and spread of Greek and local culture and religion in 4th century Magna Graecia. In 1989, he gave a paper to the Convegno di Taranto entitled ‘L’Art: Ceramique et Peinture’ which gave an overview of the history of the scholarship of Greek vase-painting based on pottery found in Italy. His ideas were out of step and more of a curiosity than a useful contribution to scholarship at this date, study having moved on by 1989. He argued that South Italian vases were made primarily for tombs, as shown by the abundance of Bacchic and funerary themes, and the often enigmatic attributes and objects geared towards a mystical exegesis that were portrayed on them. He remarks on the huge influence theatrical tragedy had on painted vases from tombs, particularly those from Apulia.165 He said it is not only in the later periods (roughly from the middle of the 4th century) that Apulian vase-painting fully acquired its funerary aspect, it is also seen in the shapes of the middle period of the vases (i.e. colossal vases that are non-functional on a practical level) and in their themes: thus on the 29 Apulian vases with scenes relating to Hell, 25 are stylistically after 360 BC and 19 after 330 BC, of which 11 are the work of the Baltimore Painter, while the myths became more and more ambiguous, and the Erotes more androgynous. Villard also states, ‘Remarquons aussi que, là ou le contexte funéraire est bien connu – c’est à dire essentiellement à Lipari -, il s’agit la d’un phénomène à la fois tardif, correspondant au début de l’époque hellénistique, comme le montre l’association dans les tombes de nombreux masques appartenant à la Comédie Nouvelle (y figure même, on le sait, un portrait de Ménandre), et limité à un nombre relativement restreint d’initiées; en était-il de même en Apulie ?’.166 He probes the significance of the extraordinary dissemination of Apulian style as well as certain Apulian themes across the

Adamesteanu Professor Dinu Adamesteanu,169 the first regional Superintendent of Antiquities for southern Italy, directed large-scale excavations at Metaponto, in Lucania, from 1971 until his death in January 2004. The so-called Kerameikos and potters’ kilns were first discovered in 1973.170 The many spoilers and some complete vases found in sealed deposits at Metaponto have made possible the precise dating and the attribution of some artists to a definite fabric. Fragments by the Pisticci, Amykos, and Dolon Painters have been found around the kilns of Metaponto, also a vase by the Tarporley Painter. The large quantities of fragments by the Dolon Painter that have been found are mostly from his mature phase, with none from his period of close co-operation with the Tarporley Painter. From this it has been speculated that he was working at the Tarporley workshop at Taranto during this time.171 The Metapontine workshops seem to have ceased production in the 2nd quarter of the 4th century, and moved production to central Lucania, at sites such as Anzi, Armento and Roccanova, and when the workshops at Metaponto restarted later in the century, the vases produced became purely Apulian in style.172 Separate excavations have been undertaken by the University of Austin Texas directed by Professor J.C. Carter, particularly around the periphery of the city, and have uncovered vases by the Pisticci and Amykos painters including some of the earliest by the Pisticci painter.173 The earliest painted pottery so far found at Metaponto is

  Robinson (1990).   Robinson (1990) 185, fig.7. 165  Vllard (1989) 177-8. Trendall (1990) 225, also believed that certain S.I. vases were made specifically for funerary purposes, saying that the huge Apulian amphorae and volute-kraters were too large for purpose and remind us of the great Geometric vases used as monuments in the Dipylon cemetery. Taplin (2007) has continued to explore the possible reasons for tragedy being popular for funerary vase-scenes. 166  Villard (1989) 195-6. 163 164

 Villard (1989) 196.   Nørskov (200) 226. 169   Not in DBI. 170  Adamesteanu (1977), (1982), (1985). 171  Trendall (1989) 58. 172   Ibid. 173   Carter (1980), (2003) & (2005). 167 168

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery from the 7th century BC. Eight vases by a colonial potter in the Corinthian and East Greek styles were found and published by Mario Denti.174

providing a valid instrument for attribution of vases to individual workshops. 177 South Italian Vases Found Abroad

Traces of kilns at farmsteads in remote areas in the Chora, such as San Angelo Vecchio, San Angelo Grieco, and Venella near San Biagio, dating to c.600 BC show that pottery was also produced away from the main pottery producing centres. Adamesteanu states:

Trendall said that South Italian vases are seldom found far from the area in which they were manufactured and were hardly ever exported overseas – less than one per cent of the extant total has come to light outside Magna Graecia.178 South Italian vases discovered outside of Italy became a relatively new area of research from the 1960s. What do the find sites tell us about their desirabilty and economic mobility in the wider Mediterranean, who wanted them, and did local pottery production in recipient countries imitate Italiote vase shapes or even decoration? Trendall and others only looked at them in their South Italian context (mainly due to lack of archaeological evidence from elsewhere, which is turning up now, plus bad reporting from sites, especially in North Africa).

The great importance of the grave-goods found in such country cemeteries lies in the fact that they reveal the existence of pottery workshops operating in these remote areas, as far away from the workshops in the Greek colonies as from their ‘branches’ established in native centres closely linked to Greek colonies.175 Another kiln, from the late 5th century BC, found at Serra di Vaglio, produced drinking-cups. Adamesteanu said; ‘Whilst the whole range of shapes typical of the period is represented, the glaze of this local ware is of inferior quality and carelessly applied.’176 A site of pottery production at the final rich stage of red-figure vase-painting in the late 4th century was also excavated under the direction of Adamesteanu near the Necropolis at Pizzica-Pantaneilo.

The annual congress of The Convegno di Taranto has been publishing discoveries in and outside South Italy since 1961. It has published on style connections between Macedonia and South Italy in the 4th century BC.179 A 4th century BC tomb, recently discovered at Agios Athanasios in Macedonia, contains a wall-painting depicting a socalled ‘Italiote kithara’ with a rectangular sound-box and parallel arms, which first appears around 360 BC and is only seen in South Italian vase-painting.180 This instrument appears more frequently in the 2nd half of the4th century on Apulian and Campanian vases along with other objects identified as symbols of wedding rites.181 Also, three tables are depicted together in the tomb: one of the Classical period rectangular shape; and two of a round shape which appeared around the middle of the 4th century and gradually replaced the former shape. On a Campanian bell-krater of the third quarter of the 4th century182 a similar rectangular and round table are represented in the same juxtaposition as that in the tomb.183 This could suggest that one artist had copied the other, and as the tomb would be closed after painting, but vases could travel, that it was the tombpainter following the vase-painter. Alternatively, if this was a standard arrangement of items in the ritual, it would be known to the mural-painter and vase-painter so would not necessarily mean one copied the other. However, it seems more likely that the close similarities of their art and furnishings shows a strong relationship between Macedonia and the South Italian colonies, keeping in mind also the Apulian vases showing Alexander’s campaigns.184

Cracolici In 2003 Vincenzo Cracolici published I Sostegni di Fornace dal Kerameikos di Metaponto, a study of the kiln excavated in the ceramic quarter of Metaponto. He used evidence from the remains of the fornace and surrounding pottery to build a picture of the production methods, technology used and the organisation of labour, and compared it to production sites in Athens and Corinth. He has pioneered the method of attributing pots to individual potters by fingerprints left in the wet clay, and even which way up the pots were stacked in the kiln by the angle of the prints. In 1996 an analysis of the fingerprints found on vases excavated at site 1 of the Metapontine kerameikos made it possible to study the ancient techniques of pottery production and to identify the workshops that produced them. This was conducted with the help of the police department forensic section, resulting in the identification of at least four different pottery workers, each with a separate task, employed in the same workshop. The project aims to expand the research to the whole archaeological area of Basilicata, combining fingerprint analysis with archaeological principles in order to compile a database of prints found on ancient vases. The aims are to improve knowledge of ancient methods and techniques of production and to identify the largest possible number of artisans and potters, forming an archive of fingerprints which will contribute to a corpus of ceramic workshops based on solid multidisciplinary scientific evidence,

  Cracolici (2003) 159-71.  Trendall (1990) 219. 179  Torelli (1985) 379-98. 180   Maas & McIntosh-Snyder (1989) 53-8. 181  Tsibidou-Avloniti (2002) 94. 182   Naples RC 144, inv. 85873, LCS 4/70, pl. 178.1. 183  Tsibidou-Avloniti (2002) 94. 184   See supra chapter IV. Also the Alexander mosaic, which appears to copy Macedonian painting. Further, the tendrils that appear in Macedonian mosaics from Vergina and Pella closely resemble those on S.I. vases (the latter often surrounding heads), and may be linked to the story of the wreath-weaver (stephanoplokos) Glykera who was painted by Pausias of Sikyon. 177 178

  Denti (2000).  Adamesteanu (1990) 148. 176  Adamesteanu (1990) 146. 174 175

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The 20th Century In 1977 Zdravko Marić published the hoard found at the Illyrian town of Daors in Bosnia, which included Gnathian vases,185 and in 1986 Maja Parović-Pešikan published the ‘Italio-Greek’ and Hellenistic vases in Zemaljskog Museum in Sarajevo, showing that ‘Canosa style’ Apulian vases had been found at Sanski Most, and Gnathian style vases at Jezerine, Neum and Ribić (all in Bosnia-Herzogovina). Campanian red-figure has also been found at Ribić and Donje Hrasno. Daunian ware was widely used and copied along the whole Illyrian coast from the 8th century BC,186 the other most numerous ceramic style being the Gnathian type, particularly widely found in Slovenia and Istra.187 Attic red-figure has been found on the east Adriatic coast from as far north as Most na Soči to Amantia in the south, with lesser quantities of Attic black-figure and Corinthian.188 Large numbers of Etruscan pottery have also been found along the Sava River, a tributary of the Danube far from coastal trading. Jean-Luc Lamboley, Director of the Franco-Albanian excavations at the ancient Greek settlement of Apollonia in southern Albania, reports quantities of Apulian redfigure and plakettenvasen, as well as Attic black- and redfigure, Corinthian ware, and pre-colonial pottery found at the site. Apollonia, near the modern day town of Fier, was (with Dyrrachium) one of the two most important Greek settlements in the region. Founded in 588 BC, the nearby harbour could accommodate up to one hundred ships and was a major trading port before a 3rd century AD earthquake altered the coastline. Apulian red-figure hydriae, kraters, lekythoi and skyphoi have been found in some quantity at the site.189 A particularly fine Apulian redfigure kalyx-krater from the beginning of the 4th century, with a Dionysiac scene of Pan cavorting with nymphs, was discovered in tomb 20 of tumulus VI at Apollonia.190 Andrew Wilson of Oxford has been excavating the site of Euesperides (Benghazi) in Libya since 1997, and has found painted Gnathian ware in the pottery assemblages, proving trade with the Punic world.191 The themes of certain tomb paintings seem to be either a reflection of those on South Italian vase-painting, or vice versa.

 Marić (1977) 5-99. This showed that Gnathian pottery was exported to Illyria contemporary with its manufacture in the 4th century BC. 186   D’Ercole (2006) 94-7. 187   Parović-Pešikan (1986) 39-60. 188   D’Ercole (2006) 97-102. 189   Lamboley & Vrekaj (2007) 133. 190  Arch. Mus. Tirana, inv. 3574. Lamboley & Vrekaj (2007) 312-3. 191  Wilson, ‘Hesperides Between East and West’ lecture given at Oxford, 2 May 2006. 185

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Chapter VI Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study This last chapter will be thematic rather than chronological, and will look at some of the different aspects of modern South Italian vase study. This will include: coming to a final agreement on the naming of regions and schools; how vases should be studied; how themes such as perspective and theatre have been treated; looting and trafficking of vases; and faking and detection. In the twentieth century the classification of South Italian red-figure vases has been approached in two main ways: fabric and style. The publication of Trendall’s and Cambitoglou’s exhaustive catalogues of all the publicly known red-figured vases of Lucania, Campania, Sicily and Apulia, classifying them by fabric, has meant that, unless someone were to undertake the vast task of re-cataloguing and publishing all these vases by a different criterion, it would appear to be the system that will prevail in future scholarship. Villard observes that the main subjects of vase study have changed little in a century: ‘c’est dans le domaine de l’iconographie que cette originalité créatrice des céramistes italiotes a été surtout ressentie par les archéologues: tous les thèmes qui font aujourd’hui encore l’object d’études attentives et de discussions serrées ont été abordés il y a déjà beaucoup plus d’un siècle’.1 Final Agreement on the Naming of Regions and Schools Once the existence of a South Italian fabric had been recognised and isolated from Attic imports and Etruscan wares, the long process of differentiating and naming regions began. Campanian (or Nolan) was established as early as the last quarter of the 18th century.2 In 1896, H.B.Walters grouped certain vases which he called the ‘Style of Asteas of Paestum’, in the following year Patroni modified this to ‘Paestum’ and a new vase region was isolated.3 Other regions were not recognised in their own right until much later, and Sicilian was the last to be isolated in the early 1950s.4

themselves in shape, figurative and ornamental decoration and function.6 The relationship between Sicilian and Campanian has never been satisfactorily sorted out, nor its connections with late Campanian Apulianising, but the chronology of Sicilian red-figure can be firmly established due to good coin evidence. Trendall, writing in 1967, said: ‘It is only during the past twenty years, as a result of scientifically conducted excavations in Gela, Lentini, Lipari, Agrigento, Eraclea Minoa, Troina, Assoro, and Morgantina, that a sufficient quantity of red-figured pottery has come to light to put beyond question the existence of a local Sicilian fabric.’7 Dinu Adamesteanu, digging at Gela in 1954, found wasters that proved figured pottery was definitely made there.8 In the 1980s Filippo Giudice and Umberto Spigo studied the beginnings of Sicilian vasepainting and its relationship to Campanian and Paestan.9 Most recently, Luigi Bernabo Brea has proposed a new chronology for the Lipari Painter.10 The realisation that Gnathian was not a local fabric, but a style of painting adopted by all South Italian regions (ans also Etruria and Sicily), was not universally accepted until the 1960s,11 although it now appears that most of the earliest Gnathian vases were made around Taranto in r-f workshops.12 Gnathian ware caused confusion for a long time, not least because the style was painted onto certain vase-shapes that were seemingly never used in b-f or r-f. It was originally named after a number of these vases were excavated at Gnathia (Egnazia) in Apulia.13 Giulio Minervini14 seems to have been the first to refer to “Gnathian” in his dissertation on vases in Bollettino dell’Instituto Archeologico in 1845.15 The name was again used by Jahn in his catalogue of the Munich Pinakothek in 1854.16 However, no proof has ever been found that they were actually made there or if indeed there was ever a kiln site at Gnathia. In 1923, Ernst Pfuhl (1876-1940) stated: Einfacher liegen die Dinge bei der schwarzbunten Hauptgattung in Italien: die sogenannte Gnathia-ware ist eine apulische Gattung von entschiedener Eigenart und steht in enger Beziehung zu der letzten rotfigurigen Keramik Apuliens, neben welcher sie bereits in der

The Sicilian school did not begin until the end of the 5th centuy BC and had close affiliations with later 5th century Attic vase-painting, making the Sicilian fabric difficult to isolate.5 Trendall said that the divergences manifest  Villard (1989) 191.   D’Hancarville (1766-7). However, by the 1830s Gerhard (1834) was calling Attic ware ‘Nolan’. 3  Walters (1896), Patroni (1897), Trendall (1935) & (1936). 4  Although Raffaello Politi of Agrigento published pamphlets between 1826 and 1841 on groups of vases in Sicily. Von Bothmer said that these pamphlets were much admired by Beazley, Von Bothmer (1987) 189. Trendall (1967) 196 attributes the founding of new pottery schools in Sicily at the end of the 5th century to the upheavals in Athens and the emigration of Attic potters and painters. 5   Dearden (1990) 231-42 discusses how 4th century Sicilian tragedy, 1 2

including its depiction on r-f is also difficult to distinguish from Attic tragedy. 6  Trendall (1990) 219. 7  Trendall (1967) 576-7. 8  Adamesteanu (1954) 131. 9   In Pugliese Carratelli (1985). 10   Spigo (2002). 11   Forti (1965), Webster (1968), Green (1968). 12   See Green (2001) 58. 13   Forti 1965) 9-10. 14   Not in DBI 15   Minervini (1845) 44. 16   Jahn (1854) xxxvi.

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Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study zweiten Hälfte des 4 Jahrhundert auftritt; sie ist bis in den griechischen Osten gedrungen, scheidet sich aber deutlich von den ihr entsprechenden östlichen Gattungen.17

the Rose Painter, who painted more elaborate foliage on smaller, more intimate vessels like cups.25

Beazley was very dubious about it: in 1928 he was still referring to it as the ‘So-called Gnathian technique.’ Trendall was still taking this view as late as the 1960s, when he traced the invention of new shapes by ‘so called Gnathian potters.’18 In fact ‘so called’ was still being used by J.R. Green in 2001, saying, ‘the name has remained as a convenient identifier’,19 but showing that academics are still not wholly confident with the name.

Ancient South Italian and Sicilian coins were studied in detail from an early age: Hubert Goltzius’ Sicilia et Magna Graecia sive Historiae Urbium et populorum Graeciae ex antiquis numismatibus was published in 1576, long before the first books investigating ancient fictile vases found in the region were published at the end of the 17th, and beginning of the 18th centuries. A subject that has been neglected is the comparison between the iconography on South Italian red-figure vases and that on coins of the 5th and 4th centuries BC from the same regions.26 In 1844, Charles Lenormant briefly touched on this in his chapter ‘Preuves de l’origine des vases peints tirées de la numismatiques’,27 but he mainly concentrates on dating vases from coin evidence. The influence of Greek sculpture (especially Pheidias and Polykleitos) on regional Greek coins was explored fairly extensively in the late 19th century by Furtwängler, Lolling, and Arthur Evans, but particularly by F. Imhoof-Blumer and P. Gardner in their ‘Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias’ of 1885-7.28 In a paper given at the International Numismatic Congress in 1936, Bernard Ashmole observed:

The earliest Gnathian artist to be islolated was the Konnakis Painter in 1930 by Heinrich Bulle (1867-1945),20 and named four years later by Andreas Rumpf (18901966), after a ‘beautiful fragment with a dancing girl’ in the Taranto Museum bearing the word konnakis in an inscription. He said, ‘nach dem ich dem maler den Namen Konnakismaler geben möchte’,21 and the name stuck. T.B.L. Webster had written ‘Masks on Gnathian Vases’ in 1951,22 but advanced the study of this fabric more substantially in his 1968 work, ‘Toward a Classification of Apulian Gnathia’, by establishing the main Gnathian groups as: I. II. III.

Coin Versus Vase Iconography

In the early stage of scientific numismatics, scholars did not lose sight of the fact that the art displayed in the die-engraving is one with the art displayed in stone and marble sculpture, in bronze statuary, and in terra-cottas. The method of production differs, that is all. In short, the word Kleinkunst, for all its convenience, is false in its implications. Curiously enough, as knowledge has increased, method has deteriorated: the various manifestations of a single spirit seem to have slipped, as it were, into separate compartments of knowledge; comparisons have only once or twice been attempted, and then in a somewhat hesitating fashion.29

Early: i. The Konnakis Group (K and Ka to Kk), ii. The Naples Harp Group (NHA to E); Middle, covering the red-spray, yellow-spray, and dotted-spray groups. Late, ribbed vases subdivided into RA to RL.

He lists stylistic details which can be attributed to groups of Gnathian painters, for example: the Naples Harp Group B with long pendants; Naples Group D with dots instead of pendants; the Konnakis Group (kb), less elaborate than the Konnakis Painter, but with Konnakis ivy.23 This was done with much assistance from Green, who followed Webster’s article in the same publication with ‘Some Painters of Gnathian Vases’, which he called, “An attempt to isolate a few personalities in the middle period of Gnathian pottery.”24 Later, Green attributed the creation of the Gnathian style to the Konnakis Painter and the Compiègne Painter, beginning just before the middle of the 4th century, being produced in a limited amount until about 330 BC when it became much more popular, due largely to the efforts of the second generation artist   Pfuhl (1923) vol. II: 911.  Trendall (1966) 14. 19   Green (2001) 57. 20   Bulle (1930) 5-45. Bulle was a professor at Würzburg, pupil of Brunn, and collaborator with Furtwängler, who specialised in Greek theatre depicted on vases. 21   Rumpf (1934) 17. Rumpf was a classical archaeologist at Cologne, specialising in vase-painting. He wrote an early work on the reception of antiquities: Geothe e l’ arte antica (1950). 22  Webster (1951) 222-232. 23  Webster (1968) 1-33. 24   Green (1968) 34-50.

He goes on to say, ‘I have omitted for the moment a third valuable source of evidence … namely, the vases: and these must, of course, never be forgotten in any study of style’.30 Unfortunately, Ashmole does not return to the subject of vases in this article on comparisons of coins with other media.31 At the congress Agnes Brett compared representations of aphlastoi (the curved end of the stern of a galley) taken as war trophies and held by the victor shown on both Greek coins and red-figure vases, which   See Green (2001) 58.  Although Sicilian coins and Attic and Corinthian vase-painting have had somewhat more attention in this respect. 27   Lenormant & Witte (1844-61) I. xxv-lxii (written as lxij). 28   Reprinted and enlarged by A.N. Oikonomides in 1964 as Ancient coins illustrating lost masterpieces of Greek art. 29  Ashmole (1938a) 17. 30  Ashmole (1938a) 18. 31   D.M. Robinson, who was at the Congress, suggested that, ‘Any archaeologist could add many more examples to those of Ashmole and with three projectors show on the screen similarities between coins, sculpture, and vases’ (Robinson (1944) 283-5).

17

25

18

26

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery are very similar in style.32 In 1938, Ashmole did return to coin and vase comparisons when he attacked G.E. Rizzo’s book Saggi Preliminari su L’Arte della Moneta nella Sicilia Greca in which Rizzo variously misquoted Ashmole’s remarks on coins and sculpture given in a paper to the British Academy in 1934.33 Rizzo also claimed that Athenian red-figure vase-painters copied Sicilian Naxos coin designs in their vase-painting. Ashmole responded: In turning the pages of Rizzo’s book, the reader may have caught sight of what looks like the tail-piece to a folio on Etruscan Urns (Plate XXI, ii). Closer study shows that it purports to be a translation of the coin of Sicilian Naxos into the technique of an Attic red-figure vase, an idea conceived by the Author, and carried out under his direction. And indeed the ingenuity with which it has been devised is beyond praise. How cleverly the head of a silen by Epictetus in the British Museum has been adapted, with its incised boundingline, its purple ivy-wreath and a purple touch below the lips: then, because its own body was in profile we have a frontal torso borrowed from Euthymides: the dotted nipples, the hooked collar-bones, the line from the navel down, the contrast between ‘relief-lines’ and fainter lines, are all there. All so like the vases of 500 BC; and all quite remote from the coin.34 However, in 1944 Herbert Cahn published convincing evidence that there is a strong parallel between coin designs of Sicilian Naxos of 550-30 BC and Attic blackfigure vase-painting.35 The head of Dionysos depicted on certain Naxian litra of this period have a marked similarity to those of the Dionysos depicted on several amphorae by the Amasis Painter and Exekias.36 Cahn also points out the close likeness of the seated figure on a Naxian tetradrachma (after 461 BC) to that in the tondo of a cup by Epiktetos.37

dolphins and porpoises on Sicilian vases, while they are common on Syracusan coins. The most marked influence of pottery on the coinage of Sicily could be the iconography on 6th century Corinthian black-figure imports, particularly the strutting cock motif. Coins showing this motif first appear in the Chalcidian colony of Himera around 530 BC, soon after Corinthian black-figure ended circa 550 BC.40 Also, bulls and large ears of corn, depicted on Campanian coins, are not seen on Campanian red-figure vases. Masks on Sicilian bronze tetras and onkia, struck in Kamarina in the last decades of the 5th century, are very similar in features and hair to the mascaroons on Apulian volutekraters of the 4th century,41 but there is a considerable gap in time between the two. Perspective John White was one of the first to study perspective on red-figure pottery,42 referring particularly to South Italian vases in his Perspective in Ancient Drawing and Painting of 1956. He concentrated on temples and tombs and their interiors painted on Apulian red-figure vases. On the volute-krater showing the tomb of Patroklos by the Darius Painter,43 the large quantity of furniture is scattered over the whole surface and there is a tendency for horizontally indiscriminate recession to be accompanied by vertical consistency. Only frontal or low view points are used. White seems to be the first in print (although this must have been previously noted) to state that the bird’s-eye view has so far been undiscovered in ancient vase decoration.44 In the later Orpheus in Hades Apulian volute-krater45 and the Phoenix and Achilles volute-krater,46 temples have developed into well constructed spatial boxes with foreshortened frontal settings. More important still is the co-ordination between the furniture and the building as a whole: In the first, the down-sloping roof, and the base, together with a couch and its platform, which recede upwards, are all seen in the same way from the left, so that the position of the spectator and his eye-level are both coherently suggested. In the second, base and ceiling, ornate couch and carved footstool, are again seen from the left with ceiling, roof, and couch-top

In 1991, T.H. Carpenter38 juxtaposed a silver stater from Paestum portraying Poseidon, c.510 BC, with an Attic red-figure tondo, c.520 BC, but they bear only a slight resemblance. There are interesting similarities and some strange lacunas in the choice of subjects portrayed on South Italian vases compared with coins of the same region: for example the abundance of bigae and quadrigae on both vases and coins, and the ubiquitous large female head wearing a sakkos.39 Also crustaceans (especially crabs) seen on coins and red-figure fish plates. This is contrasted by the absence of   Brett (1938) 23-32.  Ashmole (1934) 1-34. 34  Ashmole (1938b) 245. 35   Cahn (1944) 30. 36   Cahn (1944) 31-2, pl. IX, A,E,F,K,D,H. 37   Cahn (1944) 45, Pl. X, O & S. 38   Carpenter (1991) figs. 61 & 62. 39  Thought to be Athena on coins, but not on vases: Trendall said, ‘Some clearly represent Aphrodite, others Amazons, one is inscribed Aura … it does not seem that the painter always had a particular person or deity in mind’. Trendall (1990) 222. 32 33

  However, Kraay (1976) 208 said ‘some have interpreted the cock as the known badge of Carystus in Euboea and others as a pun on day – Himera’ [presumably the cock signalling daybreak]. Alternatively, Himeros means desire, and cocks were given as love tokens. 41   Jenkins (1979) 181-92, pl. xxvii e. 42   Beyen (1939) 47-8, Richter (1952). 43   Naples 3254 (inv. 81393), RVAp 18/39, Trendall (1982) 472, Trendall (1989) pl. 204. White refers to this vase wrongly as plate 42 (it is pl. 89) in Furtwängler & Reichhold (1904). It demonstrates the attitude to S.I. vases that, even by 1956, this very important piece had only been illustrated once. 44  White (1956) 31. 45   Naples 3222 from Altamura, RVAp 16/82. White lists this as a colossal amphora. Trendall said the painter is ‘closely allied in spirit to the Lycurgus Painter and his followers.’ (1978) 431. 46   Boston 03.804 from Ceglio del Campo, RVAp 17/75, AJA 12, 1908, pl.19. Again listed by White as an amphora. 40

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Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study sloping down, and the base platform seen as if from the eye-level of the onlooker.47 Vitruvius stated: ‘Namque primum Agatharchus Athenis Aeschylo docente tragoediam ad scaenam fecit, et de ea commentarium reliquit’,48 which places it before Aeschylus’ death in 456 BC. Pollitt said that this date is unsettling as no extant artifacts of such an early date show any trace of the system and it was not used on vases at this date, but this may be because vase-painting followed aesthetic standards peculiar to itself.49 However, Aristotle, (Poetics 1449a18) said ‘Sophocles introduced the third actor and also scene painting’. Pollitt said:  ‘Aristotle’s ascription of the beginning of skenographia to the dramas of Sophocles has neither a positive or a negative bearing on Vitruvius’ evidence. In the first place we do not really know whether Aristotle understood the term as referring to perspective or whether he was simply thinking in a more general way of “painted scenery” ’.50 Rouveret points out that Vitruvius states that Agatharchus invented scaenographia, σκηνογραφία (stage set or scenery), and that this is our nearest approximation to the ancients’ concept of ‘perspective’.51 Pollitt observes: The earliest vase paintings in which there is a significant attempt to show the apparent diminution of cubic objects in space and to show the apparent diminution of people and objects in accordance with their distance from one another occur on Attic red-figure vases dating from c. 430-400 BC. More ambitious attempts to work out a seemingly coherent, if never truly rational or scientific, relationship between men and objects in space occur in southern Italian vase painting of the fourth century BC, most notably on the well-known Apulian crater in Naples representing Orestes and Iphigenia in Tauris.52 Rouveret, referring to perspective in the representation of small interiors,53 praises the skill with which South Italian red-figure artists juxtaposed domestic objects strewn about the floor in violent tragic scenes: the Campanian krater with Phineus and the Harpies;54 and Asteas’ kalyx-krater depicting the madness of Herakles,55 in which chairs, a tripod, small tables, basket-ware and pottery are heaped together on the floor, and compares the similarities to the same objects depicted on wall-paintings and mosaic stilllifes found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. In 1999, Jesper Christensen, in his article ‘Vitruvius on Perspective’, devoted a large part of his study to the advances in perspective on 4th century South Italian vases.  White (1956) 35-6.  Vitruvius VII. ii. 49   Pollitt (1974) 242. 50   Pollitt (1974) 245. 51   Rouveret (1989) 65. 52   Pollitt (1974) 243. 53   Rouveret (1989) 297. 54   Jatta de Ruvo 1095. 55   Madrid 11094 (L. 369) from Paestum, RVP 2/127, pl.46-7. 47

This shows the apparent ingenuity of South Italian vasepainters and a certain independence from contemporary 4th century Attic vase-painting. Christensen states: In the absence of murals and panels by Agatharchus and contemporary Greek painters we must turn to the fourth-century vases of Magna Graecia for evidence of advanced perspective. This body of art holds a particular interest because it displays new techniques for rendering buildings with a sense of depth. Though these buildings look primitive and remind us of telephone booths rather than of temples and palaces, they served to introduce crucial means for generating spatial illusion.56 However, Christensen does not explain why, if advances in perspective do not appear on 4th century Attic vasepainting, he thinks they should necessarily have appeared in other Greek painting of the period, and why these advances could not have been an independent South Italian innovation. The ubiquitous ‘Underworld krater’ (so often used as an example of South Italian development) can again be used as an example of the new techniques being experimented with in South Italian workshops. Christensen goes on under the heading ‘South Italian spatial boxes’: Most of the boards or beams that compose the ceiling of the palace of Hades on the Underworld krater converge toward a single point at ground level; the effect is quite convincing as only a few lines are slightly off. In sum, the palace of Hades was painted by an artist who was able to use vanishing point perspective effectively in a distinct portion of the picture and was in command of adequate techniques for correlating localized centralization, used as a special effect, with non-centralized sections of the image.57 Trendall suggests the origins of perspective in South Italian vase-painting may be traced to the Apulian taste for large vases and the possibilities they offered to cover them in monumental compositions. This led them to seek solutions to the problems of perspective and foreshortening.58 ‘The great area which such vases placed at the artists’ disposal led to experiments in the use of perspective and in the rendering of spatial depth’.59 He said that at first these experiments were rather tentative and, as a result, rather flat (citing the volute-krater by the Painter of the birth of Dionysos60), but by the middle of the century a reasonably satisfactory solution to the problem of creating an illusion of depth had been found (he cites the volutekrater of Boreas and Oreithyia by the Lycurgus Painter61), as well as to that of the foreshortening of buildings seen

48

  Christensen (1999) 162.   Christensen (1999) 162-3. 58  Trendall (1989) 11. 59  Trendall (1989) 27. 60  Taranto 8264 from Ceglie, RVAp I 35, 2/6, pl. 9, 1. 61   BM 1931.5-11.1. RVAp I 416, 16/10, pl. 149.1. 56 57

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery in the volute-krater by the Iliupersis Painter showing Neoptolemos at Delphi.62 Trendall shows that in Sicily, the larger vases of the Lentini Group and Adrastos Group, painted around 330-20BC, show good development of architectural perspective with ceilings, juxtaposed with the perspective and foreshortening of figures (a lebes gamikos by the Lentini Group showing a woman seated in a room with a mirror,63 and a kalyx-krater by the Adrastos Group showing Adrastos, Tydeus and Polyneices outside the palace at Argos64). Lucania, although it was located between two areas where perspective was particularly developed, Apulia and Sicily, does not seem to have contributed any innovations of its own to this field. Theatre An interest in the depiction of theatre on South Italian redfigure vases emerged in the 1920s and 30s,65 along with the study of vase-painting as a tool for understanding aspects of Greek social life. In 1926 Louis Séchan published Études sur la tragédie grecque dans ses rapports avec la céramique, a first full-length study of the depiction of Greek theatre in vase-painting which remained the standard reference for many decades.66 In 1933 Ciro Drago was the first to publish specifically on South Italian red-figure vases and the theatre in his ‘I vasi italioti e il Teatro greco’.67 Drago was almost exclusively concerned with what could be learned from vase-painting about the ancient theatre itself, rather than with the study of South Italian vase-painting. Similarly, in 1939, Margarete Bieber published The History of the Greek and Roman Theater, relying heavily on South Italian red-figure painting as evidence. But, like Drago, she also showed little interest in the vases themselves, not mentioning regions, workshops or artists, museum reference numbers or, in some cases, even the present location of the vase. The photographs are cropped to the vase scene, so that even the shape of the vase cannot always be detected. In the 1950s Italiote red-figure was looked at more extensively for what it could reveal about Greek theatre, which had become enormously popular right across the Greek-speaking world in the 4th century BC, from the Black Sea to Marseilles, and had resulted in the depiction of tragic myth and phlyax comedy in two genres of redfigure vase-painting in Magna Graecia.68 In Studies in Menander of 1950, T.B.L. Webster was able to place the occurrence of comic masks from scenes on South Italian vases, suggesting contemporary production of these

comedies in South Italy with connections to select plays that Plautus later adapted into Latin in the 3rd century BC.69 He said: The main lines of fourth century comedy can be traced not only from dated literary fragments, but also from Attic terracottas and from South Italian vases which, even if not, as I believe directly inspired by Attic comedy, at least reflect contemporary Greek comic performance in South Italy.70 Webster’s research and Bieber’s theatre book, which he frequently refers to, are almost entirely theatre - rather than artifact - orientated.71 Again, little or no interest is taken in the vase-painters themselves, the types of vases most frequently decorated with theatre scenes, the regions from which the vases come, or the museum references, and in the case of drawings or close-ups of red-figure theatre scenes, again, the type of vase is not even mentioned. He attempted to recognise specific scenes from Middle and Late Comedy on South Italian vases. Besides scenes of knockabout, farce, and satire, the favourite spectacle of Middle Comedy was feasting: feasting on stage, preparation for feasting, marketing, cooks and drunken slaves. These slaves and cooks appear on South Italian vases of the Middle Comedy period.72 Thais in her name play only opened her door if the visitor had money. The theme of the closed door, the half open door, or the song before the door had already occurred in Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae73 and on a phlyax skyphos of the early 4th century.74 Webster traces the stern father of the prodigal son, found in Strepsiades of the Clouds and Laches in Menander’s Perinthia, also fragments of Anaxandrides75 and Philetairus’ Kynagis.76 He also appears on an Apulian vase of the mid 4th century and a terracotta of the first half of the 4th century.77 A South Italian vase depicting the arrival of Herakles at a feast78 can be associated with Eubulus’ Auge. The characters in this play include the young woman Auge, and the slave who tricked the weeping old man Aleus into a happy ending with feasting for Herakles. On the vase Aleus looks on with disapproval as Herakles arrives, but

 Webster (1950) 25.  Webster (1950) 153. 71   Much of Webster’s large archive on South Italian theatre remains unpublished since his death. 72  Webster (1950) 163. illust. Bieber (1939) figs. 374, 378, 384, 396. 73   (884, 960), cf. Timocles 23K, 350-30 BC. 74   BM F124, RVAp 11/182a, Webster (1950) 165, illust. JdI 1886: 293. Cotyle (with a ‘c’) is Webster’s preferred term for a skyphos. 75   Fr. 53K (not after 340 BC). 76   Fr. 7K (360-350 BC). 77  Webster (1950) 166, Bieber (1939) figs. 121 & 134, she said Attic, but the drawing clearly shows S.I. painting. However, the stern father also appears on Attic fragments. 78   Bieber (1939) figs. 358-9. Her close up photographs hide the shape of the vase. 69 70

  Milan ‘H.A.’ coll. 239. RVAp I 193, 8/4, pl. 60.3. See also a fragment of a kalyx-krater showing Apollo (Amsterdam 2579. RVAp I 36, 2/10, pl. 9,2.) where both the door and the columns are foreshortened. 63   Syracuse 47099 from Lentini, LCS 589, 27, pl. 228.1. 64   Lipari 10647 from Lipari, LCS supp. III 275, 46e. Trendall (1989) pl. 427. 65  The bibliography on Greek theatre is vast, however publications directly relating to Phlyax plays illustrated on S.I. vases are far fewer. The first to publish were Völker (1875) and Heydemann (1886). 66  Trendall & Webster (1971) say in the preface to their work that it, ‘… is in no wise intended as a replacement for Séchan’s excellent [work]. 67   Drago (1933) 3-16. 68   See Taplin (2007). 62

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Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study the nurse shows approval.79 This is possibly a light/satirical version of a Euripidean play on this subject. Webster refers to a Paestan bell-krater of c.330 BC80 showing Dionysus feasting and the masks of the leading slave, the old man, and a girl hanging behind him. He interprets this as being an illustration of a contemporary mask, with a slave intriguing on a girl’s behalf against her stern father. Another Paestan vase, a kalyx-krater, shows one of Menander’s stock-in-trade scenes: a slave/phlyax overhearing two women.81 Trendall regularly referred to theatre in his general works, but did not write a specialist article until ‘Phlyax Vases’ in 1959. He then collaborated with Webster in the production of Illustrations of Greek Drama in 1971. They pointed out that the portrayal of the comedy stage is mostly confined to South Italian red-figure, with only one known Attic vase showing comedy on a visible stage.82 Representations of the comic stage are split between portrayals of the raised stage (usually from an angle, showing perspective) and images of the backdrop/scenery.83 From the beginning of South Italian vase-painting, artists showed a remarkable interest in subjects associated with dramatic performances. In the 4th century, Attic tragedies are frequently found on the larger Apulian vases where the space is particularly well adapted to such scenes.84 The pictures are often not referable to a particular episode from a given play but rather aim at giving a compendium of the play as a whole, somewhat after the manner of a poster, which shows one or two highlights of the play, several of its principal characters, and often adds a selection of divinities.85 A fondness for the plays of Euripides depicted in South Italian (especially those from Tarentum) and Sicilian vase-painting throughout the 4th century BC shows the popularity of Attic tragedy in Magna Graecia.86 Marcello Gigante, gave a paper on Greek theatre to the Naples Convegno in 1966 in which he relied heavily on evidence from phlyax vases. He then wrote a more specialized study in 1971 attempting to identify scenes, or scenes similar to, the plays of Rhinthon of Tarentum on phlyax vases.87 The study of Greek theatre through the medium of vases seems to have been a subject much favoured by the Trendall/Webster generation. However, Kossatz-Deissmann produced an in depth study of the  Webster (1950) 170.  Vatican 120, Webster (1950) 171. Illust. Trendall (1936) pl. XIXc. 81   Zurich, Ruesch Collection, Webster (1950) 177. Trendall said: ‘[This] has a peculiar interest by reason of its subject for it is the first appearance of a phlyax on a Paestan vase. He is marked ΣΙΚωΝ [lower case omega in original] which is unusual, as there are few instances of inscriptions at Paestum apart from signed vases.’ (1935) 48, pl. VIb. 82   Athens, Vlastos, ARV2 1215 no.1, Group of the Perseus Dancer. 83  Trendall & Webster (1971) 11. 84   Ibid. 85   Ibid. 86   Ibid. 87   Gigante (1967) & (1971). 79 80

plays of Aeschylus on West Greek vases in 1978,88 identifying many scenes and the wide popularity of the Oresteia: Choephori on Apulian, Lucanian, Campanian and Paestan r-f and the particular taste for The Eumenides on Apulian vases. The next substantial study appears to have been the E.W. Handley Festschrift Stage Directions in 1995, at which three papers were given on theatre and vases, including ‘An Apulian bell-krater depicting the mask of a whitehaired phlyax’ by Trendall in the year of his death.89 This culminated in 2003 in Todisco’s massive work and catalogue La ceramica figurate a soggett tragico in Magna Grecia e in Sicilia. Oliver Taplin has recently explored what South Italian red-figure vase-painting (or what he prefers to call ‘vasepainting of the Greek West’) can reveal, through its depiction of myth, about tragedy and its popularity in the 4th century western Greek empire. He attempts to match many scenes from tragedy with (predominantly Apulian) red-figure painting and explores the possible reasons why tragedy was such a popular subject for scenes on vases intended for graves.90 The Looting and Trafficking of Vases Orphans without history.91 The history of the study of Greek vase-painting was from its very beginning tied to the history of commerce in this field’,92 This book [Renfrew’s Cycladic Spirit], written for a non-specialist audience, can only reinforce the notion that looting is something that just happens, while collecting is a noble and worthwhile pursuit. The truth is that collectors are the real looters.93 In 1996 Schnapp said, ‘Archaeology is, in my view, the little bastard sister of collecting. Little, because restricted in the ways in which she can proceed and deliver; bastard because since the nineteenth century at least she has been operating from a position of denial (an archaeologist, as everyone knows, is not a collector, and archaeologists themselves are at pains to point this out). [He goes on] One can say that the archaeologist is a collector, but accountable to various institutions, to the state and the public’.94 In 2001, Colin Renfrew said ‘the international trade in illicit antiquities is destroying the world’s archaeological heritage, this is our contention. Yet this statement is, in itself, a contentious one’.95   Kossatz-Deissmann (1978).   Griffiths (ed.) (1995). 90   Taplin (2007). 91   Chippindale & Gill (2002) 463. 92   Hoffmann (1979) 65. 93   Ricardo Elia (1993) 69, critizing Colin Renfrew for publishing the Dolly Goulandris Collection. 94   Schnapp (1996) 12-13. 95   In Elia (2001) 1. 88 89

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Investigating looting and the illicit trade in vases has aroused some strong feelings amongst academics and those in the trade and has even elicited one or two aggressive or resentful responses to my enquiries.96 But, as the very foundations of vase scholarship are built on the plundering of tombs in the 18th century, and many national collections were amassed from the big collections of the 18th and early 19th centuries, such as Hamilton’s and Canino’s, which were in reality only the fruits of ransacking tombs, how the vases were found is central to this study. Hunting for treasure was considered a respectable pastime and emotive words such as ‘looting’ only became prevalent in the second half of the 20th century. In the preceding centuries, a good private collection of vases established the credentials of a savant, and added prestige and acceptance to his place in academic circles. Looting has been pivotal to, and even synonymous with, the study of South Italian red-figure pottery since its earliest beginnings. It was also the sole source-material for scholars from La Chausse, Montfaucon, De Caylus and Hamilton onwards, until the first regulated German archaeological digs of the second quarter of the 19th century. There are two phases in the chronology of heavy vase looting: 1. the Etruscan tombs and 2. the South Italian tombs. Attic vases, found mainly in Etruscan tombs and notably also Nola, Hoffmann said, ‘Had been largely played out after almost a century and a half of looting.’97 He presumably means 1828 to the 1960s. The second phase has been researched by Ricardo Elia. He states that in the late 1960s and early 1970s large numbers of Apulian vases started to appear on the market, and continue to do so. The supplements to Trendall’s RVAp were needed to accommodate the additional 4,284 new vases that had appeared between 1980 and 1992. He said ‘44% of these turned up on the market and 31% in private collections.’98 It would appear that Attic vases having become almost unobtainable, except from old collections at exorbitant prices, a taste for the previously less regarded South Italian red-figure has been cultivated. One of the main obstacles to modern vase scholarship in Italy is illicit tomb robbery. Italian tomb robbers, tombaroli, were, and to a certain extent still are, local heroes. The most famous of these, Omero Bordo, told his biographer Ricardo Cecchelin in 1987 of prestige, women and fast cars, and of showering the local community with money, all acquired as a result of looting tombs. People from poor regions feel justified in excavating their native land because wealthy landowners, often outsiders (e.g. Canino), have previously done so on a large scale. The activities of the tombaroli are a ‘closed shop’ in which strangers are unwelcome on their patch. D.T. Van Velzen, in his article on the world of the Tuscan tomb-robbers, said:

They depict themselves as heroes who bring the treasures of the past to the public and boast of an expertise, which remains unrecognised by official archaeologists.99 There is a poacher-turned-gamekeeper attitude that pervades the tombaroli biographies that I have also experienced listening to mudlarks and metal-detector users in antiquities shops, which suggests that they think they know far better than professional archaeologists where to look and where the best finds will be. To a certain extent this seems to be borne out by their successes, but, then again, looters are not hampered by official restrictions, or the integrity of the site as a whole, that must be considered by the official archaeologist. Another famous tombarolo, Luigi Perticarari, earned the nickname ‘Mago’ because of his seeming magical power for discovering rich tombs. These men are highly superstitious and go through a ritual before entering a tomb, “Forgive me and rest in peace” is a standard prayer. Their trade is often very dangerous: Luigi Perticarari’s brother was crushed by the falling ceiling of a tomb and killed instantly, and Luigi himself was trapped in the tomb until he was dug out the following morning by a passing shepherd.100 The soft tufa, locally called piperno, which the tombs are cut from, is a sedimentary rock made up of volcanic ash which is now known to give off argon gas. It has been discovered from the deaths of locals whose cellars are made of tufa that this gas, if allowed to build up in a confined space, is highly poisonous. This is therefore a further risk faced by tomboroli who spend too long in a tomb that has been sealed for over two thousand three hundred years. In one tomb Perticarari found a skeleton sitting against the wall and all the vases smashed. He believed the occupant had been buried alive by mistake and woken and gone mad in the tomb.101 Tomb-robbers use a pointed stick called a furino to probe for hollow ground, or a car axle bounced vertically on the surface will give off a different resonance when the ground is hollow. Methods for getting vases out of the country include breaking the vases into fragments and taking them out in Luggage,102 sending them out in refridgerated transport vehicles that are unlikely to be searched, or in deliveries from modern ceramic factories mixed in with modern pottery. There is a joke told in Italy, ‘How many Italians are involved in stealing antiquities?’ answer: ‘Una buona parte’, a pun on Lucien Bonaparte (Canino), an early large scale ransacker of tombs.103  Van Velzen (1996) 111.   Perticarari & Giuntani (1986) 143. 101   Perticarari & Giuntani (1986) 89. 102  Watson & Todeschini (2006) xiv point out that none of the fractures on the New York Euphronios krater (see following page) cross any of the faces of the ten figures, suggesting that it was deliberately and carefully broken for smuggling out of Italy. 103   Meyer (1977) 99. 99

100

  Both from defensive London antiquities dealers who would not wish to be named, and from outraged archaeologists, e.g. Lyons and Elia pers comm.. 97   Hoffmann (1971) 138. 98   Elia (2001) 148. 96

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Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study At the other end of the scale are the exclusive international dealers, operating from luxury galleries or private apartments where museum quality objects are brought out from safes to be viewed by clients who have had an introduction. The centre of this trade is Zurich. Once a piece arrives in Switzerland dealers consider it ‘safe’, as there are no legal restrictions in that country and they can operate freely.104 The conspiracy to purchase figured vases looted from Italy can sometimes involve those at the top of museum hierarchies. Several much respected scholars working at museums, particularly the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, have had their careers marred by their association with dealers in looted antiquities.105 The purchase by the Metropolitan Museum of the red-figure kalyx-krater by Euphronios with Sleep and Death carrying away the body of Sarpedon in 1971 for the reported price of $1 million met with consternation from archaeologists.106 The Newsletter of the Association for Field Archaeology for autumn 1971 complained: The inflation brought to the antiquities market by such a price…cannot fail to encourage speculators whose objectives in acquiring ancient art may have nothing to do with resale but lie in the tax benefits to be gained by donating objects to museums…and the brigands whose work has scarred archaeological sites around the world? What visions of quick riches are not conveyed to them in this one transaction? The price paid for the kalyx-krater fuelled the market and looting increased. The two main buyers from tombaroli and the organisers of tomb robberies, with a huge network throughout Italy and the main exporters of looted vases, were Giacomo Medici (who was eventually brought to justice by Roberto Conforti, head of the Carabinieri107), and Robert Hecht, an American antiquities dealer living in Rome, but later escaped to New York and was tried in absentia in Italy in 2006 on 92 counts of antiquities theft. Hecht was hated and feared by other dealers and smugglers due to his vindictive behaviour. If anyone offered a freshly uncovered vase to another dealer he would inform on them to the authorities. He also let it be known that he was writing a Memoria exposing the whole trade (which he threatened to publish) and anyone crossing him would be mentioned   Pers. comm. London antiquities dealers.  The much admired and respected von Bothmer was denied a seat on the board of the AIA, see Todeschini (2006) xiii, and Marion True lost her post at the Getty and is involved in a protracted trial in Italy for conspiracy. 106  This krater, which was later proved to have been newly looted from Cerveteri, (Hoving (1993) 307-40, Watson & Todeschini (2006) xivxix) has had considerable significance in the story of vase trafficking and gained further notoriety in 2006 by being the first important vase to be officially returned by a museum to its country of origin, possibly becoming the precedent for a flood of similar demands. The country of origin argument has been further complicated by Greece’s suggestion that all Greek antiquities wherever found should be returned to Greece, see Tokeley (2006) 69. 107  Watson & Todeschini (2006) 19-66. 104 105

in it.108 Medici’s archive seized at his Zurich warehouse by Conforti revealed photographs taken of looted vases broken and soiled as they first came out of the ground. These photographs matched vases (now restored to perfect condition) illustrated in Sotheby’s catalogues. The system was to put the vases into auction and then to buy them back at a high price, thus establishing high prices, and at the same time giving the vases a legitimate provenance of having been purchased on the open market.109 By 1994 the looting had escalated to armed robbery when eight large South Italian vases were stolen to order from the Melfi Castle Museum in Basilicata. Three of these vases were recovered nine months later by the German police and the Carabinieri in a joint raid on the Munich home of Antonio Savoca, later named as one of the other main traffickers of antiquities from Italy, and an associate of Medici and Hecht.110 The internationally renowned clothes designer Gianni Versace was born in Reggio di Calabria in 1946. His family were poor native Calabrians and he grew up in an area full of the remains of an ancient Greek colony, in an atmosphere rife with illegal excavation and tombaroli.111 In later life, when he became massively wealthy from his couture empire, he built up a large collection of antiquities, especially South Italian vases. He used the iconography and peripheral patterns from these vases in many of his designs, including his ‘Medusa’ china and his furnishing fabrics.112 None of the vases he owned had any provenance, and he was pursued by the Italian Superintendent of Archaeological Objects who, an ex-Versace employee said: Had been writing to the designer, demanding to know the exact provenance of the ancient Greek and Roman statues, vases and jewels that so often appeared as the backdrop of photographs published in glossy magazines around the world, ‘Gianni had ordered his secretary to put their letters in the bin without replying - Fed up with the lack of response, they sent in the financial police. We were ordered to say nothing.’113 Although Versace was pursued for taxes, no satisfactory answer was ever received by the Italian Archaeological Service.114 Carlo Lerici did a geophysical survey of the cemetery of Monte Abbatone in Cerveteri and found that 400 of the 550 tombs had been robbed since World War II.115 John   Numerous references are made to Hecht’s behaviour in Watson & Todeschini (2006) e.g. 207. 109  Watson & Todeschini (2006) 141. 110  Watson & Todeschini (2006) 9-10. 111   See Versace (1996). 112   See House and Garden, July 1993. 113   Rocco (1994) 3. The vases have never been published, and their whereabouts is unknown. The clandestine method of their acquiring would preclude publishing or public sale, as this would furnish the authorities with an opportunity to investigate the collection. 114   Rocco (1994) 4. 115   Lerici (1962) 19-20. 108

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery Griffiths Pedley, in his diatribe against tomb robbers, ‘Provenience Unknown’ states: To declare that all activities of all clandestine excavators do untold damage to our understanding of the historical context which initially informed the objects of art, artifacts and other materials thus excavated, is to state the obvious.116 On the other hand, Michael Cole, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Yale in the 1960s and 70s, observed: For all the talk about looting, archaeologists are among the worst offenders, since as many as half of all excavated sites are never published. The fellow who has dug them up has left long ago, his notes are scattered and labels vanish. The site could just as well have been destroyed, and yet every department of archaeology, every museum is familiar with this problem. If someone brought me the Rosetta Stone, should I refuse to look at it because it was out of context and dug up by a pot-hunter? 117 The Papal State first put restrictions on the removal of antiquities from its lands in 1571, and introduced licences for the export of antiquities as early as 1624.118 Then, in the 1760s, Ferdinand IV King of the Two Sicilies, after seeing the popularity of vases being found around Naples, introduced legislation prohibiting their removal from his kingdom. The Greek government made a law as early as 1834 controlling the removal of antiquities from their country, followed by the Italians in 1872, the first international attempt to curb looting, and removal from the country of origin of cultural property, was made in 1920 when the League of Nations included articles to this effect in the Treaty of Sèvres, but it was never ratified. During the 1930s, The League’s Office International des Musées put forward a draft ‘Convention on the Repatriation of Objects of Artistic, Historical or Scientific Interest’, but this was contested by the USA, Britain and Holland, and was abandoned at the outbreak of war in 1939.119 Finally, UNESCO produced the ‘Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property’, ratified in November 1970.120 The UNIDROIT convention on the international return of stolen or illegally exported cultural objects held in Rome in 1995 wants to stop the purchase of any antiquity, but this represents a recent change in attitudes. In 1956 it was considered beneficial and eminently acceptable when   Pedley (1997) 604.   Quoted in Meyer (1977) 48-9. Peter Addyman estimates that 60% of excavations remain unpublished after 10 years, see Renfrew & Bahn (2000) 559. 118   Prott & O’Keeke (1984) 35-6. For Cardinal Aldobrandini’s 1624 Decree, see Emiliani (1978) 67-8. 119   See Watson & Todeschini (2006) 28-9, who claim that these countries were protecting their art markets. 120   See O’Keefe (1997).

Trendall himself played a crucial part in convincing the Felton Bequest to purchase Greek vases for ‘a representative collection of high quality’121 for the National Collection of Australia. ‘As an honorary consultant for this collection until 1992, Trendall oversaw the continued growth of this distinguished collection of vases.’122 Trendall himself remarked, regarding the collection: ‘Substantial progress has been made during the past twenty years … in the acquisition of classical antiquities,’ and goes on to lament the rapidly rising prices and export restrictions.123 No one, surely, would challenge Trendall’s integrity. Similarly, Hoffmann said of Beazley’s passive involvement in the trade: Following World War II hardly a vase was unearthed clandestinely of which he did not receive photographs for attribution; in fact, in Beazley’s day a Greek vase without a Beazley attribution was virtually unsaleable.124 It is probable that the unofficial excavations will continue regardless, but if a total ban remains, the objects will disappear permanently into private collections. The British Museum’s new policy of buying finds directly from amateur excavators at the market rate, decided by an independent board, has meant many unique items being saved from obscurity. In the past declared artifacts were often confiscated and were therefore rarely reported. This policy could be initiated in Italy and, if combined with an amnesty on past finds, could produce beneficial results. If we put aside the moral issue of whether the grave of a human being should ever be opened, if eventually all the thousands of tombs in Italy are to be excavated by legitimate archaeologists, and the tens of thousands of artifacts are to be removed, where will be their final destination? Should thousands of often almost identical vases be stacked, rarely to be seen again in the vaults of Naples Museum?125 Or could some regulated system of official sale and a register of who owns them be kept, or should all but official institutions be banned from keeping them? As with alcohol prohibition in the USA in the 1920s, perhaps criminalising the enthusiast is exacerbating the problem. More international co-operation is needed to decide an official policy. If more archaeological digs were arranged and foreign universities given permits to dig, many of the vases that are continually being looted could be saved and provenanced, but, as any archaeology student desperate for experience knows, these digs are few and far between. Two notable exceptions to this are the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno e la

116 117

  McPhee (1997) 513.   McPhee (1997) 514. 123  Trendall (1979) 17. 124   Hoffmann (1979) 65. Beazley had his own vase collection, the greater part of which was presented to the Ashmolean. 125   Photographs taken in the British Museum in the late 19th century show that far more vases were on display then than the small representative selection of each fabric that is accessable to the viewing public today. 121 122

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Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study Regione Siciliana, and the Società Magna Graecia which finance excavations of sites in Southern Italy. The AJA has stated that it will not serve for the announcement or initial scholarly presentation of any object in a private or public collection acquired after 30 December 1973. If this attitude spreads to other archaeological publications it could mean that illicit or even casually discovered items not immediately handed to the authorities would never be recorded by them. In such a rich field of discovery as redfigure finds in South Italy this will result in a reduction in the spread of information, and thereby, a reduction in fresh interest in the subject. Ricardo Elia states: The reluctance of scholars to deal with the problems that are inherent in the study of private collections springs from the fact that the relationship of scholar to collector is essentially that of client to patron or guest to host. The obligation owed to the collector - for hospitality, access, and sometimes financial supporttends to compromise the researcher’s objectivity and corrupt his or her intellectual honesty. An added complication is the fact that the scholar’s publication of a collection inevitably serves to authenticate the collection and increase its market value.126 Winifred Lamb said when publishing seven vases she had purchased for herself from the Hope Sale: ‘It is by publication that a private collection can best apologise for its existence, and for the following vases which passed from the Hope Collection to mine this is due.’127 Emotive words such as ‘trafficking’ and ‘looting’ seem to be attached to the unofficialness of the digging and the eventual destination of the finds, rather than the standard of the excavation.128 In the final analysis, it would seem that the definition of whether a piece has been ‘looted’ or ‘excavated’ is whether it has been properly recorded and published. In a final paradox, the beautiful 18th and early 19th century plate books that first illustrated plundered Greek vases are now themselves in danger from a more recent type of despoiler: the picture dealers who break up the books and find a ready market for the individual engravings selling them to collectors and interior decorators.129 Faking and Detection But more, the world reports (I hope untrue)   Elia (1993) 67.   Lamb (1918) 27. 128   Nørskov (2002) 107, although deploring illicit excavation, uses the phrase,’Who owns the past?’. 129  A study of Book Auction Records suggests that probably fewer than half of the volumes of Hamilton’s first vase collection survive intact, as only dealers selling the plates individually (at prices of up to £1600 for the double fold-outs), can afford to buy them at public sales. Copies in libraries, usually defaced by necessary library stamps to protect them from theft, will inevitably deteriorate from continuous study. Making good reproductions of plates and text available on the web could reduce deterioration from over-use of originals. 126 127

That half Sir William’s mugs and gods are new; Himself the baker of th’Etruscan Ware That made our British Antiquarians stare.130 The history of faking figured vases can be traced back as far as Late Corinthian I red-ground which imitates contemporary Athenian black-figure with enhanced orange c.600-575 BC. Italiote vase-painters copied Attic wares in the late 5th century, whilst the Etruscans invented superimposed red, a simple technique that imitates redfigure, presumably to fool the purchaser into believing they were buying Attic. The bell-kraters owned by Benavides, mentioned in Chapter I (fig. 8), show that modern copying started as early as the 16th century. Ever since black- and red-figure vases first became more than mere curiosities in the 18th century, they have been the subject of clever forgery, reproduction and imitation. Frank Arnau, suggesting that the vast majority of vases are fakes, states: ‘However industrious and hard-working, the Apulians could never, during their two hundred years of ceramics manufacture, have produced a ten-thousandth part of the antique vases which reach the market every year.’131 This is a vast exaggeration. Although faking is a serious problem to museums, academia and the antiquities trade, by Arnau’s mathematical reckoning, practically every Apulian vase appearing on the market over previous years has been a fake, and, by default, suggests there is no looting of genuine Apulian vases. Also, the upper-end of the antiquities market and the auction rooms of New York, London and Switzerland have a vital reputation to protect to ensure collectors continue to invest in antiquities. They offer guarantees including a ‘no time limit’ refund if any doubts are cast on the authenticity of any item. This means that only the cleverest fakes can slip through as genuine. However, Cuomo di Caprio shows through her series of anecdotally told case-studies that collections are peppered with fake vases,132 and Trendall said he had great difficulty telling the difference between genuine and fake vases, especially at the end of his career.133 Forgeries with an old provenance have themselves now found a collectors’ market, and are realising high prices. In a 1999 auction at Christie’s South Kensington, two vases can be compared: a 19th century fake of a black-figure kalpis, lot 272, openly catalogued as ‘After the antique’ fetched £1700, whilst a genuine Campanian red-figure bail-amphora, lot 178, of larger size, in the same auction, made only £1000.134 The first study of the clay used to make ancient pottery seems to have been made by Alexandre Brongniart (17701847) in a chapter on pottery materials in his Traité des arts céramiques of 1844. However, the first serious study  A ditty by Peter Pindar, the leading satirist of the 1770s, on the sale of Hamilton’s vase collection. 131  Arnau (1961) 164. 132   Cuomo di Caprio (1993). 133   Pers. comm. Alan Johnston. 134   Christie’s, South Kensington, ‘Important Antiquities,’ sale no. ANT8543. 20 Oct.1999. 130

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History of the Study of South Italian Black- and Red-Figure Pottery started at the beginning of the 20th century. Clay contains iron particles. While the clay is soft, these particles can move, but when the clay is fired and hardened they remain permanently in the same position, pointing towards the earth’s magnetic field as it was at that time and place. In 1907, the scientists Giuseppe Folgheraiter and P.L. Mercanton predicted the magnetic variations for each century. They made tests on South Italian vases which were found to have been fired when they were close to the south magnetic pole.135 In ‘La Methode de Folgheraiter et son role in Geophysique’, Mercanton claimed to be able to date the vases by the flow of the glaze and the magnetic dip or inclination of the clay.136

remained the standard work for this subject. Further work on clay analysis has been done by Ian Whitbread at the Fitch Laboratory at the BSA.140

For example the bearing for the area of Arezzo in the first century BC is 61° 3´. So if a vase is placed next to a magnetic needle it can be roughly dated to within a century. Therefore any vase made since forgeries began in the eighteenth century would show completely different directions of magnetic pull. However, this method is neither straightforward nor universally accepted and was not pursued, and thermoluminescence, the emission of light released from pottery by the application of heat, has become the standard scientific dating technique. Robert Boyle (1627-91)137 observed this phenomenon as early as 1663 and called it ‘A diamond that shines in the dark’ in a paper given to the Royal Society in that year. The application of this method to dating ceramics was pioneered by Professor Edward Hall at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University from the late 1950s.138 The development of Thermoluminescence (TL) has been applied to accurately date and authenticate ancient ceramics. TL dating is the determination by means of measuring the accumulated radiation dose absorbed during the time elapsed since pottery, which contains crystalline minerals, was first heated. A 100mg sample is taken from the underside of the vase with a minute drill. As the pottery sample is heated to 500 degrees centigrade during measurements, a weak light signal, the thermoluminescence, is produced proportional to the radiation dose.139 Forgers have attempted to circumvent the TL test by using fragments of ground-up genuine ancient pottery on the bases of fake vases. Doreen Stoneham worked at the Oxford archaeological laboratory from 1970 and tested ceramics for over 35 years. In 1997 she set up her own company testing ancient pottery for auction houses and antiquities dealers and it has become a very successful business testing 1,000s of samples and employing a number of staff. Richard Jones’ Greek and Cypriot Pottery: A Review of Scientific Studies (1986) made a thorough study of ancient clay types and has

One of the most notorious early vase forgeries was perpetrated by painting a scene onto an original, but undecorated, amphora. In the late 18th- early 19th centuries when vase-painting subject matter was of more value to collectors than the vessel itself, forgers and dealers who over-painted vases had to come up with ever more eyecatching subjects. This amphora was painted with the reunion of Eros and Psyche. Both recline on a couch, Psyche, the central figure, naked from the groin upwards, with muscular torso and large breasts, entices a worried looking mature Eros to partake wine from a jug-holding child Eros. That this scene was depicted on a fifth century vase was apparent proof that Apuleius’ story of the same subject came from a source much earlier than the late Hellenistic tale previously supposed. This hoax went undetected until, in 1869, Heinrich Heydemann, of the German Institute in Rome, published the vase, which was by then in the Vatican Library, believing it to be genuine ‘… in dem griechischen Mythos von Eros und Psyche oder genauer genommen in der daraus entlehnten platonischen Allegorie zu suchen.’141 Unfortunately the forger had copied the picture from an intaglio which was on display in the Berlin Museum. Otto Jahn, replying in the same journal, showed that the intaglio must also be a fake. Reinhard Kekulé, summing up, showed that the gem was ‘on hand’ in Berlin for anyone to copy:

 The S.I. clay being particularly responsive to this kind of test.   Mercanton (1907). 137   DNB, author of The Sceptical Chymist (1661) and formulator of Boyle’s Law. 138   Bulletin of the Research Laboratory. 139  This method cannot be used for absolute dating as levels of radiation change over time, or the pot may have been exposed to heat previously, but it can determine whether a vase was made in antiquity or is modern. Also, thermoluminescence cannot determine recent painting on ancient pottery.

Another problem is the adding of forged parts to broken genuine vases to make them appear complete. Under a quartz lamp the edges of added areas and over-painting show up a different shade of fluorescence than the original vase. Also to give the faked vase a suitable surface to take the applied red or black figuring (often using a stencil taken from a genuine vase-painting), a colourless primer or varnish is used. These can give off a smell which can be detected long after the vase is finished.

Auf Tafel 15 des laufenden Jahrganges dieser Zeitschrift hat Heydemann eine von ihm in der vaticanischen Bibliothek entdeckte Vase publicirt, auf welcher zum ersten Male eine Darstellung von Eros und Psyche vorkommt; er hat daraus p.19ff. Folgerungen gezogen, weiche noch Otto Jahn p.51ff. zurückgewiesen hat. Aber auch das Factum selbst, auf welches sich jene Folgerungen gründeten, müchte zunächst weiterer Erhärtung bedürftig sein. Eine für modern geltende Stoschische Paste des Berliner Museums, welche ohne Zweifel noch in anderen Exemplaren vorhanden sein wird, wiederholt die Vorstellung des Vasenbildes mit so geringen

135 136

  For further work on clay analysis see Prag (2001) 1015-24, Ian Whitbread at the Fitch Laboratory at BSA, Whitbread (1995). 141   Heydemann (1869) 19-22. 140

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Aspects of Modern South Italian Vase Study Modificationen, dass ein Zusammenhang zwischen beiden mit Nothwendigkeit supponirt werden muss. Ist die Vase die Vorlage für die Paste gewesen? Oder ist das Vasenbild nach der Gemmencomposition fabricirt? Wer die traurige Vasenzeichnung mit ihrer mehr als “archaistischen” Stilconfusion daraufhin prüft, wird sich, auch ohne Kenntniss des Originals, nur für die zweite der beiden Möglichkeiten entscheiden können.142 This vase was supposedly found in Italy during or before the early 18th century (which it probably was, sans painting), and passed through the great collections of Cardinal Gualtieri, and the Museo Gregoriano, which formed part of the Vatican Museum. Until recently, modern copies of black- and red-figure vases made for interior decoration, or the tourist market, were readily recognisable as reproductions. However, copies of South Italian red-figure (but apparently not Attic) vases are now appearing on the market that are quite indistinguishable from ancient vases except for their pristine condition. The fabric is identical, as are the slip, the painting and the weight. They are being sold as copies and are of the finest workmanship, but are very highly priced.143 These vases, with perhaps a little deliberate distressing, could eventually find their way onto the antiquities market.

  Kekulé (1869) 116.   E.g. a lekanis for sale in a shop in Athens in 2005 for 750 euros. A genuine lekanis of very similar design was for sale at the same time in a London antiquities shop for £950. Inevitably, the vendor was unwilling to reveal more about this new workshop. 142 143

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Conclusion

This work has shown how South Italian figured vases have played a major role in the development of the study of Greek pottery, from their first rediscovery in the 1st century BC, but how, after the discovery of large numbers of the finer Attic vases in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, they were neglected and ignored. Collected by the Romans,1 in the Middle Ages they were frequently uncovered and subsequently studied for several centuries when vases from mainland Greece were unobtainable, and they formed the foundations that led to modern vase scholarship. They were the cause of huge academic battles concerning the origin of figured vases (particularly between Tuscan and Neapolitan savants) and were the core of the early large collections such as those of Valetta, de Caylus, Gaulteri and Mastrilli. Hamilton’s collecting from tombs near Naples rather than from those around Rome meant that a good part of his first vase collection was South Italian, further influencing academia and fashion through the wide publicity that the collection received due both to its publication and its subsequent display in the British Museum. The realisation that South Italian vases were ultimately of Greek origin challenged the notion of the classical tradition as being Rome-centred until the beginning of the 19th century. In an important ramification of the finding and studying of vases, it has been seen how they played a major role in the neoclassical revival, influencing the design of all aspects of decoration including furniture, costume and fabrics, wall-paintings, door frames and door furniture, and the silhouette, and had a huge impact on the pottery and porcelain industries – particularly in England, with Wedgwood taking the lead. I considered the trade in publishing sumptuous plate books of collections which grew up as a consequence of the passion for vases, and how these volumes helped to sell the collections and achieve academic notoriety for the vendor. I have also looked at the early 19th century obsession with the shapes of vases and the novel theories that were published concerning the reasons for their shapes – including imitating shells and plants (rather than considering the more obvious reason of utility), and the attempts to name vase-shapes by comparing surviving vases with those mentioned in ancient texts. The establishment of modern archaeology can be seen to have been at least partly built on the work of 19th century German archaeologists excavating and attempting to catalogue and categorise the thousands of vases being found in Italy. We can see the long struggle to unravel  And in the case of the Portland Vase and other cameo glass, arguably imitated by them. 1

the origins of South Italian, Attic and Etruscan pottery found in Italy, and how it was complicated by the location of their finds, rivalry among scholars from the different Italian states, and the confusion caused by the discovery of more figured vases in Italy than have ever come to light in mainland Greece. Two short publications, one at the beginning of the 19th century, the other near the end, were the foundations of South Italian vase study as it has become: Lanzi’s Dei vasi antichi dipinti volgarmente chiamati etruschi of 1806, a dissertation that established the difference between Greek, Etruscan and Italiote vases for the first time; and Furtwängler’s three pages tacked onto the end of his chapter in Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture of 1893 demarcating clearly the differences in style between the vase-painting of Greeks settled in Magna Graecia, and the black- and red-figured vases of Attica. It has been shown how, once this conundrum was solved, the second phase of distinguishing between the different fabrics and periods of South Italian wares was undertaken in the 20th century. Following the major ground work of vase connoisseurship established by Beazley, it was ultimately Trendall who dominated the 20th century study of South Italian pottery, with Tillyard and Moon in the early stages, and followed in recent times by Schmidt, Mayo, Schauenberg, Descœudres, Denoyelle, Pugliese Carrattelli, Robinson and McPhee, and the empirical work of the Italian field archaeologists Adamesteanu, Cracolici, Denti, Bottino, Bernabò-Brea. An overview of the years to 2000 has shown how the study of South Italian vases has expanded into many new aspects such as ancient perspective, representations of theatre, funerary context, tracing the history and whereabouts of vases from early collections, and the appliance of scientific methods and equipment to determine more accurate dating, clay origins and location. Finally I have looked briefly at how scholarship originated from the study of the spoils of looted tombs which stocked the great museums, but how now, those performing the same practice are vilified, whilst little attempt seems to be made by Italian superintendents of archaeology to find the tombs before the looters, or issue permits to bona fide universities. Also it was seen how the popularity of vases as valuable collectors’ items has spawned a wider trade in looting and faking, and how these two activities have further complicated vase scholarship. Western museums registering with the Museums and Galleries Commission and abiding by its acquisition policy will mean that many highly important or unique vases, or possibly even vases from a fabric never seen before, may appear on the market in the future, but will not be acquired by official museums 112

Conclusion or made available for their staff or archaeologists to study, and may disappear into private collections permanently, thwarting the advancement of study. When the idea for this book was first conceived, I saw the lack of published material on the history of vase scholarship, particularly South Italian, as a gap for further research. However, from around the death of Trendall to the present has seen an awakening of interest in how the collectors and scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries saw, collected, studied, interpreted and published ancient fictile vases from Italy. 1996 saw an expansion of interest in the history of the study of Greek pottery found in Italy with Jenkins’ and Sloan’s exhibition at the British Museum: ‘Vases and Volcanoes’, and the publication of the exhibition catalogue of the same name, which looked at the life and collections of Sir William Hamilton, and covered a wide range of aspects concerning collectors, antiquaries and connoisseurs in Naples and the rest of Italy in the 18th century. This was followed by a three day colloquium at the British Museum at which twenty seven speakers from Europe and America read papers. Eight of these papers were published in The Journal of the History of Collections the following year, edited by Lucilla Burn.2 There was a further exhibition in December 1996 at the Tate Gallery entitled ‘The Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century’, which devoted part of its display to 18th century vase collecting with many South Italian vases. In 1998 the Museo Gregoriano Etrusco have put on exhibition 142 South Italian and Etruscan vases from the collection. These were installed in the new Sala XXII with a cross section of the Vatican’s most representative Campanian, Paestan, Lucanian, Gnathian and Etruscan vases. Interest in the history of vase study then grew with Breed’s 1997 pamphlet ‘The History of Greek Vase Scholarship’, Rouet’s Approaches to the Study of Attic Vases (2001), which devotes several chapters to 18th and 19th century vase-study, Boardman’s History of Greek Vases (2001) with its chapter on the history of connoisseurship, Nørskov’s Greek Vases in New Contexts (2002), and Kurtz’s ‘A Corpus of Ancient Vases, Hommage à Edmond Pottier’ (2004). Claire Lyons has published articles on the Carafa and Mastrilli Collections, and Nørskov has looked at the building of museum collections. Ricardo Elia, Emilia Masci, T.H. Carpenter, Hubert Giroux and Martine Denoyelle are each involved in tracking the provenance, diaspora, and present whereabouts of vases from early collections (many of which were largely South Italian) known from early publications and catalogues. Masci in particular has pursued archival documents in Naples to reconstruct early 18th century collections.3 Added to this, modern reception studies are looking more closely at 18th and 19th century vase collections in papers   JHC 9 no.2 (1997).   Elia (2001) & pers. comm., Masci (2003) & (2007), Carpenter gave no response, but information obtained from Lyons pers. comm., Giroux (2002), Denoyelle pers. comm. Lyons (1992) & (2002), Nørskov (2002). Wiegel (2003) gives lists of Greek vases in historic collections.

including Kurtz’s (2004b) ‘Reception of Classical Art, an Introduction’, and published theses such as Sarti (2001) and Coltman (2006), with Warwick University Classics Department now offering research degrees in ‘Eighteenthcentury reception studies’ with a strong emphasis on figured vases. The Karnoff Collection at the Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum at California State University, San Bernardino, is a travelling collection which can be hired. It has been built exclusively with Etruscan and South Italian vases ranging from Villanovan wares of the 9th century to polychrome wares of the 3rd century from Canosa. They are themed showing the effect imported Greek vases had on local Italiote styles, especially the effect on Daunian Ware. The museum gives a running history along with the vases, and cites the great plague of Athens in 430 BC and the Peloponnesian War in the late 5th century as reasons for the reduced number of Attic imports, but also the immigration of Attic vase-painters into southern Italy, and the development of an individual South Italian style.4 Greek vases are increasingly becoming the focus of academic attention, with South Italian vases attracting champions and their own share of art-historical and archaeological interest. Current scholarship is beyond the scope of this work, but looking to the future of South Italian vase study, connoisseurship is taking second place to the study of the use and status of painted vases in their original context. The ratio of domestic use to funerary purpose will no doubt continue to be explored. The application of purely scientific methods, using ever more sophisticated equipment, seems likely to sideline the ‘eye’ of the art historian. The early discovery of South Italian pottery, particularly 4th century red-figure, has been seminal in the study of all Greek figured vases, yet South Italian vases have been treated as lesser fabrics throughout most of modern scholarship. Copied by Piero della Francesca, hijacked as a prime example of Etruscan art by the Tuscans, the western world was made aware of Greek painted pottery through the publication and display of Hamilton’s first vase collection, which had a high proportion of South Italian vases. Despite this, South Italian vases have permanently taken back-stage to Attic wares since the huge discoveries at Vulci. Largely thanks to Trendall’s pioneering work, South Italian vases have found a place in the canon, as they richly deserve.

2 3

  No traceable publications; see www.a-r-t.com.

4

113

114

Abbreviations Abbreviations in this work follow those in standard use in The American Journal of Archaeology. Those not in AJA are:

AnnInstCorrA Annali dell’Instituto di corrispondenza Archeologica ASA Annals of the Society of Antiquaries AEGR d’Hancarville, Antiquités Etrusques, Grecques et Romaines AttiRAccArch Atti dell’Accademia di Archeologia, lettere e belle arti, Naples b-f black-figure BL British Library BM British Museum BSR British School at Rome DBF Dictionnaire de Biographie Française DBI Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani DNB Dictionary of National Biography EHCA Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology ICS Institute of Classical Studies (London) IoA Institute of Archaeology (London) AIIN Annali dell’Istituto Italiano di Numismatica JGS Journal of Glass Studies JHC Journal of the History of Collections JKF Jednoty Klasických Filologů KCL King’s College London LCS The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily MPC Middle Protocorinthian NDB Neue Deutsche Biographie PBA Proceedings of the British Academy r-f red-figure RVAp The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia RVP The Red-Figured Vases of Paestum S.I. South Italian V & A Victoria and Albert Museum

115

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